Rick Santorum continued his assault on the poor and minorities yesterday evening. While speaking to a group of about 100 students at a small Iowa Christian college, Santorum claimed that no one in America has ever died because they didn’t have health care coverage. This, in fact, is a lie, as proven by numerous studies.

During an exchange, Santorum railed against same-sex marriage, telling Dordt College students gay sex is not equal to straight sex, apparently from a “moral” stand point, and then there was this:

Santorum also had a tense moment when a student asked him about health care and the Christian responsibility of caring for the poor.

The student said he didn’t “think God appreciates the fact that we have 50 to 100,000 uninsured Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare every year,” citing a 2009 study out of Harvard University.

“Dying?” Santorum answered before going back and forth about the validity of the study.

“The answer is not what can we do to prevent deaths because of a lack of health insurance. There’s — I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance,” Santorum said to a crowd of 100.

“People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to,” he said. “And it’s not the fault of the government for not providing some sort of universal benefit.

Here are a few facts, Mr. Santorum:

“Researchers from Harvard Medical School say the lack of coverage can be tied to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States — a toll that is greater than the number of people who die each year from kidney disease.” (New York Times, 2009)

“A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered byU.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.” (PNHP, 2009)

Igor Volsky at Think Progress adds:

The former Pennsylvania senator has told people who can’t afford health care to stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials like cable and cell phone bills and even suggested that insurers should deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Santorum has decided he will do or say anything, now that the race is tightening. That’s neither very Christian nor very moral.

Tagged as: care, dice, died, gay sex, Health Care, health insurance, labor, no one, Pennsylvania, people die, physicians for a national health program, politics of the united states, Rick Santorum, santorum, santorum controversy, social issues, uninsured in the united states

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