Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45,000 People Annually
September 18, 2009
(ChattahBox)—A new study puts a deadly face on the consequences of the failure of the U.S. to offer universal health care to its citizens, estimating that 45,000 people die every year due to a lack of health insurance. This alarming figure has increased about two and a half times, since 2002.
The authors of the Harvard-based study noted that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t provide guaranteed health care to its citizens. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, study co-author, professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Mass said:
“Historically, every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of nonprofit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 pay with their lives.”
The researchers analyzed a large group of U.S. adults under age 65 who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), between 1986 and 1994. The CDC subsequently tracked the study participants to see who died by 2000.
The Harvard researchers found that the uninsured of the study group suffered a 40 percent increase in death rates compared to participants covered by private insurance, even after taking other risk factors into account.
Lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper said:
“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health. We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease – but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”
The study noted that deaths due to lack of health insurance now top those caused by many common killers, such as kidney disease, because the uninsured are more likely to go without health care. The study estimated that the lack of health insurance causes about 44,789 excess deaths annually.
One of the richest nations in the world now has a grim and shameful statistic to report: one American dies every 12 minutes from lack of health insurance.
If anything convinces lawmakers and Americans that we desperately need a “public option” in any meaningful health care reform bill, this should be it.
Comments
14 Responses to “Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45,000 People Annually”
Got something to say? **Please Note** - Comments may be edited for clarity or obscenity, and all comments are published at the discretion of ChattahBox.com - Comments are the opinions of the individuals leaving them, and not of ChattahBox.com or its partners. - Please do not spam or submit comments that use copyright materials, hearsay or are based on reports where the supposed fact or quote is not a matter of public knowledge are also not permitted.
[...] more: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … Share and [...]
[...] the rest of this great post here [...]
There is a whole brouhaha going on around the country now about how the Healthcare Program debated now in the U.S. Congress is going to bust the U.S. budget, and how it will unload a great deficit debt on our children and grandchildren. But nobody has been complaining about the billions we spend in the Iraq bloody war, or how many billions we spend in Afghanistan and Pakistan while we have turned them into human slaughterhouses.Now this report tells us that 45.000 Americans die annually because they cannot afford medical care. And we should feel ashamed to be the richest country in the world – and waste billions to kill people who just don’t like the U.S., rather than spend those billions to save American lives. And the hypocrisy of all this is the phony U.S. claim that fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “saves American lives!” How about the 45.000lives that perish here for lack of medical care, while military spending is unlimited, and while Wall Street executives run away with millions of bonuses from the U.S. Treasury salvage loans?
In the south of us, Brazil doesn’t have our riches, but it has free medical care from cradle to grave for all it people. And they do that easily because they don’t have to spend almost $ 1 trillion on global wars. And NOBODY in Brazil dies from lack of medical care, because the priority of Brazil is its people, whereas our priority here is feeding our war machine with “gold plated weapons,” and military and defense contractors are feeding back the U.S. congressmen and senators with “gold political contributions” to secure more and more funding under the pretext of the Holy Cow -the National Security. Cuba’s ex-president Fidel Castro described the U.S. military “a global killing machine.” And now we are learning that wasting a $ 1 trillion on our global killing machine also kills 45.000 Americans by default of unavailable funding for their medical care! Does that make us the greatest country in the world -as we hear so aften? Nikos Retsos, retire professor
[...] Read the rest here: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … [...]
[...] The rest is here: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … [...]
[...] here: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … Categories: Health Tags: change, change-congress, consequences, deadly-face, face-on-the, [...]
[...] Read more: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … [...]
hmmm, no insurance is linked with a plethera of things…dont know what they will blame it on next….the alcohol?? lmao.
Much as I don’t like this news item, I feel that it is essential that we put it out in the open so that the powers that be will understand that every American must be covered by health insurance. US spends the most US dollars on health care, why then are there people still not insured?
Evelyn Guzman
http://www.free-symptoms-of-diabetes-alert.com (If you want to visit, just click but if it doesn’t work, copy and paste it onto your browser.)
[...] More here: Study: Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45000 People Annually … [...]
No more money left for health reform, is what I read in a comment above, there is no more money left for not having health reform. Medicare is going bankrupt in seven years and if the government was to offer another public plan it too would go bankrupt. The sad truth is that the whole stinkin thing needs to be handed over to the government but it never will be. So guess what? Within the next ten years you will see the worst recession/depression in the history of modern America.
Lack of Health Insurance Kills 45,000 People Annually is not impossible.
Not all people have health insurance especially for those who have financial problem.
Most of the poor people who have disease prefer to stay at their own homes rather than in the hospital because they don’t want their family to problem the bills they have to pay during their stay in the hospital.
That is why its really a must that all people have a health insurance which is very affordable.
Like http://www.medigap360.com. its an online site that offers Medicare Supplemental Insurance for less, and I am sure that many people will love that online insurance site.
[...] who die from lack of health insurance every year: about 45,000 people. People who die from terrorists acts every year: (from 2001-2003): 870 [...]
[...] see: chattahbox.com/us/2009/09/18/study-lack-of-health-insurance-kills-45000-people-annually/ and [...]