“What I hope the president does… is talk about jobs, debt, terror and if he stopped right there it’d suit me fine, because if he focused on those three and got them in a better direction, then we could deal with health care.”

- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) via NPR

In a fit of anger upon hearing this, I tweeted:

“Lack of access to health care kills more Americans every month than terrorists have in our nation’s entire history.”

- Me, via twitter

Admittedly, this is a very bold claim.  And I stand behind it.

The presumptions I’ve made in making this claim take into account the following assumptions which, depending on your point of view, are refutable:

• “Americans” means US Citizens on US soil.
• “Terrorists” means those who apply the calculated use of violence to achieve mass casualties against US citizens  in order to forward political goals.

The thing about statistics is that you could game either body count either way.  You could immediately throw out the study I reference, using a 2002 Institute of Medicine study which puts the total at less than half of the study I quote.

You could also pile on to assume that Terrorist attacks are any random act of violence leading to death, in which case the reverse claim could be made.

In looking at Terrorism, I’m using a much narrower focus.  The “terrorist” I speak of is the kind that we’re supposedly fighting in this War on Terror.  This precludes things like hate crimes, campaigns by the KKK, and many other uses of systematic violence with political motives.   It also precludes attacks on those working for the military, law enforcement or those attacks committed abroad.  I’m talking about organized terror groups acting specifically against civilians in the US along political lines.  All that being said:

Deaths attributable to Lack of Access to Health Care: 44,789 Annually, (approx. 3,732/month)

Deaths attributable to Terrorism in US History: 2,910 (Running total)

• 9/11: 2,668
• 1995 Oklahoma City: 168
• 1920 Wall Street Bombing: 38
• 1910 Los Angeles Times Bombing: 21
• 1993 WTC: 6
• 2001 Anthrax Attacks: 5
• Unabomber: 3
• 1996 Atlanta Olympic Bombing: 1

Which basically means there’s 822 terrorist deaths left to go before my statistic fails.  Any other attacks I forgot?