NEW American Journal of Public Health shocker: 45,000 deaths among uninsured Americans each year!

[avaistheone1]

Study finds lack of insurance can be lethal

As medical care has improved for people with health insurance, the consequences of being uninsured have worsened, according to a new study that says the lack of coverage translates into nearly 45,000 deaths each year among working-age Americans.

Researchers from Cambridge Health Alliance reported yesterday in the American Journal of Public Health on a study that followed 9,005 adults under 65 years old who took part in a national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1986 through 1994. After 12 years, 351 people had died. Sixty of them were uninsured, and 291 were insured.

After accounting for differences in age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of dying than people with private insurance.


http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/09/18/study_finds_lack_of_insurance_can_be_lethal/




These numbers are more than double previous estimates.
Staggering. This is like experiencing fifteen (15x) September 11ths each and every year, or almost the number of American casualties experienced in the entire Vietnam war but each and every year.

If we wait 10 years to solve this problem we are giving the death sentence to 500,000 uninsured Americans.
Where are our priorities?

[Joanne98]

1. This is a country that kills it's own people.

[ej510]

2. This is terrible news, but it is new which needs

to get out there.

[msallied]

3. Republicans or Libertarians could give a shit less. That's the whole idea with them.

Their social Darwinist bents incline them to believe that anyone who doesn't have insurance isn't worth saving, and therefore it's better for the rest of humanity if they die. Of course, no politician would ever say that out loud, but it's behind every vote they cast against any social safety net.