Do Democrats want people to die?

Yesterday, I got an email from a lobbying organization, which masquerades as a grassroots organization, led by Governor Rendell’s campaign manager with the subject, “As The Senate Delays, People Are Dying“.

The extreme demogoguery was used to demand that the House Democrats PA ABC plan (a model of RendellCare), claiming studies show that uninsured have shorter life expectancies than those with private insurance, among persons of similar medical conditions.*

Of course, those studies also show that people on government insurance plans have shorter life expectancies than the uninsured.* So to use some extreme demogoguery of my own, putting more people on government insurance (passing PA ABC) will kill people.

* Any decent researcher would note that this is a correlation, it does not show causality, particularly when both the uninsured and those on government insurance tend to have lower income and less education, both of which are strongly linked to health outcomes.