Healthcare

I thought the article brought up a few good points about healthcare. I personally believe that everyone should have equal access to healthcare and I think our country is falling behind in this aspect. I once saw a documentary about people who lived in Canada but near the border between the US. They refused to ever set foot in the US because they were afraid if they got hurt they would have to pay a lot more than the government provided healthcare that Canada offers. I think that people shouldn't have to "wait till it gets bad" in order to go to a doctor just because they can't afford it. The stories from the people in the article were heartbreaking because no person should have to suffer with an illness just because they can't afford help or they don't get treated right at a community hospital. The opening few paragraphs of the article bothered me though. They cited some (to me) extreme quotes and data. Like: "the risk of premature death is higher, with uninsured non-elderly adults being 20–50 percent more likely to die than those with health coverage." This bothered me first of all because everyone is going to die and what makes people who are non insured more likely to die early? Are they genetically programed to get sick because they don't have healthcare? I guess it might make sense in the fact that people who don't have healthcare are less likely to go to the doctor therefore more likely to get sick. However, there are a lot of lurking variables that might come into play in some of these statistics.