More than 26,000 working-age adults die prematurely in the United States every year because they lack health insurance, according to a study published by Families USA. The consumer advocacy group study, estimates that a record high of 26,100 people aged 25 to 64 died for lack of health coverage in 2010, up from 20,350 in 2005 and 18,000 in 2000. That adds up to a rate of approximately 72 deaths per day, or three per hour.
The non-profit group based its report on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and a 2002 Institute of Medicine (IOM) study that showed that Americans who lack insurance face a 25 percent higher risk of death than those with coverage. The findings are in line with a study by the Urban Institute think tank that estimated 22,000 deaths nationwide in 2006.
“Lives are truly on the line,” said Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, who supports the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). ”If the Affordable Care Act moves forward and we expand coverage for tens of millions of people, the number of avoidable deaths due to being uninsured will decrease significantly.” Pollack is not the only healthcare advocate to predict that the number of uninsured will continue to rise without reform as healthcare costs accelerate, employers cut benefits, and the social safety net unravels because of fiscal pressures.
“The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress to address an American tragedy and an American shame,” Pollack said. “The fact remains that for the millions of Americans without health coverage, only the Affordable Care offers the promise of access to affordable coverage and to a longer and healthier life.”
According to the report, the reasons for being uninsured differ, but many without health insurance were denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Others have been priced out of the market at a time when keeping their homes and feeding their families take priority over holding on to insurance in the face of rising premiums. Some lost their benefits when employers stopped providing coverage.
Census Bureau data show that 50 million Americans lack healthcare coverage, and experts say that these people do without medical care, physician visits and preventive tests including cancer and blood pressure screenings. “The uninsured get healthcare about half as often as insured Americans, on average,” said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, director of the think tank RAND Health and co-chairman of the committee that wrote the 2002 IOM study. “There is an overwhelming body of evidence that they get less preventive care, less chronic disease care and poorer quality hospital in-patient care,” he said.
The $2.6 trillion American healthcare system, which totals nearly 18 percent of the economy, is accessible to a majority of working-age Americans only through private health insurance. But insurance costs – premiums, deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance – are unaffordable for many.
Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the national trade association that represents the insurance industry said the rising cost of care must be addressed. “Health plans have long supported reforms to give all Americans the peace of mind and financial security that healthcare coverage provides. The nation must also address the soaring cost of medical care that is adding a financial burden on families and employers and threatening the long-term sustainability of our vital safety net programs.”
Families USA counters that the current delivery system is stacked against Americans who lack insurance. They pay more for care because they lack the ability to negotiate discounted prices on physician and hospital charges like insurance companies can.
Writing in Forbes, Matthew Herper points out that “This estimate is 19 years old, and this number doesn’t tell us much that’s new about what is wrong with our healthcare system. If anything, it emphasizes how our total lack of information about what works and what doesn’t is trapping us in an economic and social death spiral around health costs. If anything, available data seem to point to this estimate being low. The real story is that we care so little about how much insurance matters to people’s life spans that we haven’t really bothered to find out. It’s possible that the number is actually higher. A 2009 article in the American Journal of Public Health actually found a 40 percent increase in the risk of death for those who lack insurance. The IOM notes this finding, and that using it would have substantially increased the 26,000 number. So how many people do die from lack of health insurance? The short answer is that we don’t know, because we don’t look. We should have data collection systems in place to answer questions about how healthcare is performing. This should translate into more transparency, so that voters and consumers can find out how well the system is doing. Instead, we tend not to track data about the healthcare system, and to keep it completely siloed. And then we wonder why the system doesn’t work.”
