Posted on 02/12/2010 8:17:12 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It's a contentious question, but curiously, one that doesn't get debated nearly as fiercely as things like "how many uninsured people are there?" I find that surprising, because after all, we don't necessarily care whether people are marked by some survey as "insured" or "uninsured"; we care whether there is preventable suffering in the world.
But it turns out to be really hard to determine how many people die without insurance, which is the subject of this month's column. The most recent available study, which also had the largest sample and controlled for the most variables, found no effect at all--a result which surprised the hell out of its author, a former Clinton advisor. Other studies say the number is in the tens of thousands.
The left is predictably fond of the study which got the largest number, 45,000 a year. Unfortunately, its authors are political advocates for a single-payer system, who also helped author the notorious studies on medical bankruptcies. Those studies are very shoddily done, with parameters that somehow always conspire to produce the maximum possible number. In the first study, they set an absurdly low threshhold for what constituted a "medical bankruptcy". In the second, they chose 2006, the year after the 2005 bankruptcy reform act had driven an unprecedented spike in filings. It seems pretty likely that medical bankruptcies were bound to be overrepresented in 2006, since most financial events are easier to see coming than illnesses. But even if you disagree--and the authors offered an incredibly wan explanation of why they did--it's very clear that the people who filed in 2006 were not going to be a representative sample of bankruptcies in a normal year. I can't imagine why you would choose to study 2006 unless you were looking for biased results.
(Excerpt) Read more at meganmcardle.theatlantic.com ...
Not many, I would guess. My niece is ill and hasn’t been able to work now for several years. She used to own her own business with employees. After looking for insurance for awhile, she finally found an affordable individual policy with Blue Cross.
So if they die sooner because they didn’t have the money to pay for health care - it’s all the same in 100 years.
If they were worth keeping alive, they would have money or health insurance. But since they don’t - why should we care about them? They are *literally* worth less.
But their families still complain and whine, for some reason.
how many people die from lack of health insurance??
the number is fractional compared to the amount of people who die at an early age because of things like stress or heart attacks because they work to much in order to pay taxes which are fed into entitlement programs which they get nothing from...
The possibility that no one risks death by going without health insurance may be startling, but some research supports it. Richard Kronick of the University of California at San Diego’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, an adviser to the Clinton administration, recently published the results of what may be the largest and most comprehensive analysis yet done of the effect of insurance on mortality. He used a sample of more than 600,000, and controlled not only for the standard factors, but for how long the subjects went without insurance, whether their disease was particularly amenable to early intervention, and even whether they lived in a mobile home. In test after test, he found no significantly elevated risk of death among the uninsured.
Emphasis added. Highly telling that the left plays up deaths when their own studies say it's not so...
If you look at the stats for the number of people hospitals kill by giving patients the wrong meds or by performing unnecessary or improper procedures, its possible that more lives are saved than lost by being uninsured.
There are two people in my home town who have no insurance and both have been in Methodist Hospital in the Houston Medical Center for over a month each and haven't paid a dime. They aren't charged for meds after being discharged.
I don't know anybody who has died--or not gotten the best treatment available.
We all know that evil insurance companies are charged more to help pay for the freebies.
He died from being unemployed. Democrat policies are killing jobs, and with a job he would have maintained his self dignity and personal well-being.
Democrats are guilty of policies that are killing innocent Americans. That's un-American.
She broke her knee skiing last Friday and still has not been authorized to get an MRI on that knee. She has spend hours calling and emailing for authorization to no avail. The situation is completely unacceptable.
The HC company is Cigna, and they f*cking suck!
The problem is that the lack of health care insurance does not translate into lack of quality health care; ask anyone who works in an emergency room if lack of insurance equals lack of health care.
health insurance <> health
Just today I passed on the street four dying people lying barely moving, 2 men and 2 women.
I asked them what happened...they all “ said, “ I had no health insurance’.
I then asked if I could have their cell phones, watches and car keys since they no longer needed them.
At that they got up and ran away.
We’ve seen a call to cancer screen now 10 years later in life and “every other year”.
Now I see a call to limit the number of x-rays, MRIs, etc.
The powers that be are already trying to ration coverage.
No but everyone knows that Clarence Gatemouth Brown ELECTED to forgo his cancer treatment to die at home smoking instead. But that was not a lack of insurance or a refusal of service (to him).
Plenty of people can't afford health insurance or health care.
Part of the problem is the more government gets involved the more expensive it is. That goes for anything the gov't gets involved in (education, housing etc)
Another part of the problem is most people don't pay for their insurance or care, at least not totally. The tab is picked up by someone else (employer, gov't).
Too many people have their heads stuck in the sand on health reform. It isn't the disaster the left makes it out to be but neither is it all sunshine and lollipops like those on the right think it is.
I can think of three people makes me want to have a your time is up button.
“The issue is the hardworking family that’s trying its darn best to make ends meet but still cannot afford to pay for healthcare if and when someone gets horribly sick.”
I suspect that you are talking about a normal American family. You know, the ones that have 2 versions of video games, drink lattes every day, can’t wait to get the new i-pod, take a couple of vacations every year, drive new cars and eat out 4 times a week. You’re concerned about these families, right?
Yet, as I have been busting my hump for 3 years to become debt free, build an emergency fund and sign up for an HSA with a high deductible, now I’m supposed to feel responsible for the normal family.
Keep your laws off my BODY.
Not one. Ever.
People die from disease, old age or trauma.
I entirely REJECT this leftist paradigm of "If you deny me what might have saved me, then the result is YOUR FAULT!" The article's title begins from that viewpoint, and is therefore flawed from the start.
First of all everyone will die someday so it is a little disingenous to imply that insurance had much to do with it at all. I’d bet that far more people in a year die with insurace then do without! There is no way to know whether someone who does not have insurance and dies would’ve had the same thing happen even if they had insurance and since it is illegal to turn anyone away from an emergency room then it is the person’s fault if they didn’t seek medical attention.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.