Harvard Study: Doing Without Insurance Can Kill You
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Americans without health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than Americans with insurance. This translates into an annual death toll of 45,000 who die for lack of proper medical care. That’s the result of a study published recently by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance.
The study began in 1988 with a survey of more than 9,000 people aged 17 to 64, taken by the National Center for Health Statistics from 1986-1994, and then followed up through 2000. Researchers adjusted the data for factors such as age, gender, income, education, body mass index, and regular alcohol use and smoking. Even with those adjustments, the data show a significant difference in death rates between people who have health insurance and people who don’t.
A big reason for the difference in mortality rates is that people without health insurance postpone getting medical treatment until their conditions become dangerous. Seeking early treatment is especially critical for people who develop cancers such as mesothelioma, a lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Earlier treatment nearly always translates into longer survival. In 2007, an American Cancer Society study found that uninsured cancer patients are 1.6 percent more likely to die within five years of their diagnoses than those with insurance.
Even people with insurance put off seeing a doctor when they should, of course. But for working people without insurance, getting medical care can set them back hundreds and often thousands of dollars. The very poor often are treated for free in public hospital emergency rooms. However, even then, seeking medical care can mean taking an unpaid day off from a minimum-wage job.
So, people without insurance tend to postpone seeking medical care far longer than people with insurance. This not only puts the patient in greater danger; it means the condition is more advanced and will be more difficult, and more expensive, to treat.
Another complication for leaving more than 45 million American uninsured is that treatment for the uninsured is a major cause of rising cost for everyone else. As explained recently in the Los Angeles Times by Dr. Robert W. Robertson, the number of uninsured Americans continues to increase, meaning the amount of un-reimbursed medical care given in hospitals continues to increase. To make up for these losses, hospitals raise the prices for procedures that everyone else must pay. This causes insurance companies to raise their rates. And every time insurance companies raise their rates, more people lose their insurance.
So, getting more Americans covered by insurance would not only save lives; it would also help control costs.
As we dither over health care reform, remember that uninsured Americans are dying who could have been saved, at a rate of 1 every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 a year.
— Barbara O’Brien
