Uninsured More Likely to Die, Study Finds
Simply Lacking Health Insurance Can Increase the Risk of Death by
By EMILY WALKER
MedPage Today Staff Writer
Sept. 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — People without health insurance are 40 percent more likely to die than those with private insurance, according to a new study whose authors say the finding underscores the need to expand coverage to the 46 million who lack it. Americans without health insurance have higher risk of death.

According to the report, published today in the Journal of Public Health, lack of health insurance was a factor in the death of as many as 45,000 people in 2005.

Researchers lead by Dr. Andrew Wilper, of the Cambridge Health Alliance, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, conducted a survival analysis of data from 9,000 adults under the age of 64 who were enrolled in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III).

Participants in the survey, which ran from 1986 through 1994, were asked questions about insurance, health status, income, and education, among other things, and were examined by a physician.

Among the 9,000 participants, about 16 percent were uninsured. People who were young, minorities, smokers, and had less education and income were more likely to be uninsured.

For the current study, researchers looked at the number of people enrolled in NHANES III who had died by 2000 and determined about 3 percent of the participants were dead.

After adjusting for factors such as obesity, exercise habits, alcohol use, and smoking status, researchers determined those without insurance were 40 percent more likely to die than those with a private insurance plan.

Researchers excluded those on Medicare or Medicaid from their analyses.

Among the other factors that increased the risk of death were clinically-verified poor health (222 percent), smoking (102 percent), being a former smoker (42 percent), and being a male (40 percent).

So, while other factors clearly make a person more likely to die, the new finding suggests that being uninsured is more hazardous to the health than previously thought.

In fact, the risk factor is 2.5 times higher than a 2002 estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which that suggested about 18,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 die per year because of lack of health insurance.

Uninsured Less Likely To Seek Or Get Necessary Care

The study's authors said previous investigations have shown that the uninsured are more likely to go without needed care, which could make them more likely to die than their insured counterparts.

Also, uninsured people are more likely to use emergency rooms, indicating that a decision not to treat a preventable illness might stem from not having insurance.

The IOM has said that having insurance improves health because it allows people to get medical care when they need it, to have a regular source of care, and to have continuity of coverage.

The authors also said the increased risk of death attributable to lack of insurance suggests that alternative measures of medical care for uninsured people, such as community health centers, do not protect against fatal medical issues as effectively as private health insurance.

"Despite widespread acknowledgment that enacting universal coverage would be life saving, doing so remains politically thorny," the study authors said. "Now that health reform is again on the political agenda, health professionals have the opportunity to advocate universal coverage."

The leading Senate healthcare reform plan — from Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — would cover about 90 percent of the uninsured, the senator said. Baucus is the ranking member of the Finance Committee.

The study's authors pointed out several limitations. One is that data was collected at a single-point, so that investigators would not know if an uninsured person became insured later on.

However, the authors point out that if a person is uninsured at a specific point, he is likely to be part of a group of people who are uninsured over the long term.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/lack-health-insurance-raises-death-risk/Story?id=8606408&page=1

" People without health insurance are 40 percent more likely to die than those with private insurance, according to a new study whose authors say the finding underscores the need to expand coverage to the 46 million who lack it. Americans without health insurance have higher risk of death."

Interesting that an article opens with a clear fallacy. This statistic does not mean that coverage needs to be expanded. It means that (among other things) the insurance industry needs to be deregulate (that is, the government must quit stealing from providers and others in the industry)

Yeah, deregulating banks worked real well.

Thanks again--right on the money!!

Ya Except that Sen. Max Baucus's plan isn't all that helpful to anyone but the insurers. HOpe they get that right. As it stands I wouldn't vote for his so called passable plan.

I don't want the co-op plan.

Ya and how about the airlines industry.. LMAO

Hell no, they already said that they had no idea if a co=op could work on a large scale.

Actually, that's a whole different manner. They were given the pleasure of using private funds without supervision-they were quasi-private/quasi-public. The risks they took were "securitized"-that is, backed by taxpayer money. (They had buddies in the government and the FED) This is explained in Thomas Woods' recent book "Meltdown".

It would be a nearly total falsehood to call the bank collapse a failure of "private enterprise", as a private enterprise would not take such risks (they would be accountable to shareholders).

This is another quasi-private/quasi-public example, not deregulation or free market failure.

To quote economist Thomas Woods,

"Businesses long ago discovered that the only way to have a permanent or at least long-lasting cartel is to have the cartel agreement enforced by government regulation, with the threat of heavy fines and/or imprisonment for cheating. Thus, the railroad and trucking industries were cartelized by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which set industry prices and was controlled for decades by those industries. The Civil Aeronautics Board cartelized the airline industry in a similar way for about half a century until it was deregulated in the late 1970s. There was vigorous competition and price cutting in the electric utility industry until it was ended by government regulation and the creation of franchise monopolies by government in most cities in America. AT&T enjoyed a telephone industry monopoly thanks to state government regulation that made competition illegal for decades. The list is almost endless."

I'm uninsured, and I feel healthier than ever.
*cough* *cough* *sniffle* *cough* *cough*

Here's a tissue for you.

Public option.

Let's see if we can focus this debate.

Do you believe that health care is a right or a privelege?

a human right..

A human right.

Ladylid, Winx:

So do I. Let's see what some of the "status quo'ers" have to say. Because this is the crux of the debate.

A free choice option