You know Larry, I'm not discounting your personal experience, but the number (44 mil?) of 'uninsured' batted about by some needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Not so long ago, Blue Cross/Blue Shield did a study and found a percentage of these 'uninsured' made $75K per year but chose not to have health insurance. I work with one of those by the way. Also, my brother-in-law is an adminstrator at a large hospital and they don't turn anyone away for anything so your claim of "many, many are dying because they can't afford to get any service at all", does not jive with what my brother-in-law tells me. I know there are many in this country who don't have health insurance but they do have health care.
Not with a grain of salt...but not God's word either. You know how statistics work, and how difficult it is to get the numbers right. So there's dispute and always will be. In science they have a name for this phenomenon - experimental margin of error.
However, I wouldn't take that 75k example as typical. It defies common sense.
my brother-in-law is an adminstrator at a large hospital and they don't turn anyone away
No hospital emergency room anywhere turns away anyone. It's the law - Hill-Burton from the '50s and other stuff subsequently. But that doesn't contradict my statement about people suffering from lack of medical care. Showing up indigent at a big-city emergency room is no fun...and a lot of people didn't know you could do it. As the knowledge has become more widespread the pressure on hospitals has increased. At first, governments covered the shortfall with taxes but now - as that's becoming impossible - more and more hospitals are closing.
A large part of the uninsured are also young people who don't feel the need to spend money on health insurance.