Estimate: 11m chronically ill people lack insurance

More than 11 million working-age Americans who suffer from chronic illnesses lack health insurance and have no regular access to health care, according to Cambridge researchers.

Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. David U. Himmelstein and colleagues from Cambridge Health Alliance report results from interviews with more than 12,000 adults from 18 to 65 years old taking part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 through 2004. They found that nearly one-third of the 36 million adults without insurance had one or more chronic illness, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or asthma.

Uninsured people with chronic illness were less likely than people with insurance to have a visited a healthcare provider in the past year. They were more likely than insured patients to say the emergency room was where they would go to get medical attention.

"These findings counter notions that persons without insurance are a largely healthy population with little need for ongoing medical care," the authors write.