Death toll higher for uninsured
By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff
About 320 Massachusetts adults age 25 to 64 died in 2006 because they lacked health insurance, according to an estimate released today by Families USA, a national healthcare advocacy group based in Washington.
The death toll is a statewide extrapolation of national reports produced by the Institute of Medicine and the Urban Institute, and based on the US Census estimate of the number of uninsured in Massachusetts, which may overcount the total. An IOM report in 2002 found that the uninsured are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than those with health coverage.
“Massachusetts is likely to have a significant drop [in the death rate] as a result of the healthcare reform legislation being implemented,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.
Uninsured people are more likely to delay or forgo needed medical care, according to a number of studies.
The 2002 IOM report estimated that 18,000 adults died nationwide because they didn’t have insurance. A follow-up report by the Urban Institute estimated that 22,000 died in 2006 for the same reason.
Families USA produced estimates for each of the states for 2006. The numbers ranged from 30 people in Vermont to 2,700 in Texas.
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Or it could be that hospitals delay medical treatment and demand payment before treating patients without insurance. I have experienced this at a Boston hospital and north shore hospital recently.
Health Reform in Mass caused me to lose my health insurance... No one cares.
You mean not diagnosing or treating a disease results in earlier death? Wow, who would have guessed it? Do they really need expensive lengthy studies to arrive at conclusions that anyone with awareness could arrive at?
Or could it be that uninsured people are from a lower socioeconomic standing and clearly this is associated with other risk factors for premature death including smoking, obesity,etc......as Mark Twain said : there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics....
Dr. V, rich people aren't fat and don't smoke? I guess all the obese people I see driving expensive cars with a cigarette hanging from their moth are just poor people in disguise. No, rich people with insurance who smoke and ignore obesity can treat their cancer and diabetes. The poor without insurance just die from it. But come on, the basic right of life should be assured to rich people only.
Unfortunately Nashville, it is simply a fact that more poor people smoke and are obese...
The healthcare law in MA is a scam. All it did was force those who could not afford it to buy it, which makes no sense. Meanwhile, the insurance companies are making a killing because they've gained significant customers who are now forced to pay them by law. Although the rates may appear cheaper, the state is merely subsidizing the difference providing the health insurance companies with the full premium. The only humane solution would be to do away with health insurance companies entirely, remove the profit factor, and give the money directly to the health care institutions just as they do in most other "developed" and not so "developed" countries.
For smoking evidence see: http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/15/3/262
and for obesity:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/329/14/1036
Evidently there are a lot more obese smokers not driving expensive cars....
And I don't know that health care is "a basic right to life...although this has been propagated by the media....
A plumber won't snake your drain or a mechanic won't fix your car without being paid, but it's perfectly alright for me to be expected as a physician to provide a large percentage of my care for free (only to be subject to malpractive lawsuits)???? People want unlimited healthcare, but expect it for free...IT COSTS MONEY--THAT"S WHY INSURANCE IS EXPENSIVE
//A plumber won't snake your drain or a mechanic won't fix your car without being paid, but it's perfectly alright for me to be expected as a physician to provide a large percentage of my care for free (only to be subject to malpractive lawsuits)???? People want unlimited healthcare, but expect it for free...IT COSTS MONEY--THAT"S WHY INSURANCE IS EXPENSIVE//
Hello Sir,
I won't die if a plumber won't snake my drain
I won't die if a mechanic won't fix my car
But I will die, if a doctor refuses to treat me - becoz I'm poor and can't pay???
I don't blame the doctors - they do this for a living and are not charity! But what about the Government? Aren't they supposed to take care of the people who can't afford?
I don't know; but check it out with the 3rd world countries - rich or poor, some form of health care is provided by the Government Run Hospitals. In India, you can get treated (for almost) free of cost in a Government Hospital (of course, no comparison to the facilities out here and those - but at least one has a chance to get treated, which is better than not getting treated at all).
Anyway, life goes on... do we have a choice?
Dr. V, thanks for the links. I would like to remind you of the qoute Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics." By the way, most of the extreme poor are on some sort of Govt. assistance to begin with, it is the working poor and middle class , who are not all fat and smokers, that are suffering the most. But our awesome non competive free market approach has created the most exspensive healthcare in the world. Obviously more deregulation is the best solution. Greed is a sin in all religions.
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