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Lack of Health Insurance causes 44,789 deaths in United States every year

Paul Rosenberg at OpenLeft brings to our attention a recent study conducted by Harvard related researchers. The study concludes that 44789 deaths occur in United States because of lack of health insurance!

http://www.openleft.com/diary/…

The actual article linked below states the following in its conclusion. It is powerful indictment of the state of healthcare in United States. What a shame!!!

The United States stands alone among industrialized nations in not providing health coverage to all of its citizens. Currently, 46 million Americans lack health coverage. Despite repeated attempts to expand health insurance, uninsurance remains commonplace among US adults

Lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44789 deaths per year in the United States, more than those caused by kidney disease (n=42868). The increased risk of death attributable to uninsurance suggests that alternative measures of access to medical care for the uninsured, such as community health centers, do not provide the protection of private health insurance. Despite widespread acknowledgment tha enacting universal coverage would be life saving, doing so remains politically thorny. Now that health reform is again on the political agenda, health professionals have the opportunity to advocate universal coverage.

Read the full article at

http://pnhp.org/excessdeaths/h…


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 17 Comments

17 comments

  2. Chris Blask

    We spent $1T (anyway) in response to an event that killed 3,000 people.  We could argue that this has been spent to avoid having another 3,000 people killed, and for the sake of argument I’ll but that defense.

    Now, again for argument, let’s assume that healthcare reform costs $1T over ten years (adding +10% to estimates so far) and none of it is recoverable by savings (contrary to the claims) but all Americans manage to get coverage.  According to the logic of this report, that would save 447,890 American lives.

    These are apples and oranges we are comparing – true – but I think there are arguments that make the real comparison lean even further in support of my point.  If the report is correct, these lives would demonstrably not be lost if their owners had healthcare.  As far as fending off deaths due to terrorism, it is at best a chance of reducing the risk,  we lose additional lives in the military, and if all of the costs in the effort including homeland security would no doubt multiply that $1T.

  3. HappyinVT

    people will say, “too bad, sucks to be that person.”  Folks who can’t afford healthcare should just get a second job or change careers.

    There was a LTE where the author wrote that he was in construction but because he wanted to start a family and knew he needed to have health insurance he changed jobs.  He’s an accountant or some such.  So, he wondered, why shouldn’t other folks do the same thing.  Before I could write my pithy response someone wrote a wonderful smackdown.  It’s not like we don’t need construction workers, servers, etc.  Shoot, I have a technical kind of job, albeit entry level, and I can barely afford health insurance.

  4. atdleft

    Really scary that the HMO industry really has so much control over our political process that not only has single-payer been completely shut out of the national debate, but they don’t even want a public option that we can all choose for ourselves. It’s so damned frustrating.

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