Sen. Angus S. King Jr., Maine independent, said in an interview with Salon magazine that conservative groups campaigning against Obamacare are “guilty of murder.”
For example, a $750,000 campaign by the Virginia-based conservative group Generation Opportunity is meant to dissuade young people from buying into the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges.
“That’s a scandal — those people are guilty of murder in my opinion,” Mr. King said Friday. “Some of those people they persuade are going to end up dying because they don’t have health insurance. For people who do that to other people in the name of some obscure political ideology is one of the grossest violations of our humanity I can think of. This absolutely drives me crazy.”
Mr. King recounted that when he was 29, he was provided health insurance as a staffer for then-Sen. Bill Hathaway and for the first time in a decade went to a clinic for a checkup. The doctor found a mole that was cancerous, and Mr. King had to have surgery to have it removed, Salon reported.
“The point of the story is that without the surgery I would have died,” he said.
“The bottom line for me is 15, 20, 25,000 people a year die in this country because they don’t have health insurance,” he continued. “Enabling more people to get coverage is not just common sense, it’s humane. To me it boils down to a moral question, and that is would you allow someone sitting in front of you on the subway to die, or would you take some action — call 911 or a doctor or do CPR yourself. Most people would say no I would not allow someone to die. You have to realize that as a society we’re answering ’yes’ to 25,000 a year who are dying before our eyes and saying we don’t care.”
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• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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