Study: 250 Wisconsinites died in 2006 due to lack of health insurance
26 03 08 - 12:13
Health insurance could be a matter of life and death in Wisconsin according to the non-profit Families USA. The universal healthcare advocacy group is publishing the first ever state-by-state report detailing how the uninsured are impacted on a state level. Wisconsin is one of the first 13 states to be put under the microscope and the group found that of the 2,976,000 adults between the ages of 25 and 64 living in the state in 2006, 10.7 percent were uninsured. They also discovered they in that same year, 250 Wisconsinites died due to lack of health coverage.
The organization estimates that between 2000 and 2006 adults between the ages of 25 and 64 in Wisconsin who died because they didn't have health insurance were more than 1,600. Families USA used 30 years of data concerning death and health insurance coverage to come up with their data.
During a conference call Tuesday Families USA director Ron Pollock said those without health insurance are more likely to try and ignore pain or symptoms and hope for it to go away instead of seeing a doctor. As a result, "the disease spreads and when they finally get care it is too late and they die."
He gave the example of a woman who had a heart attack, she did go to the emergency room to get treated, but "she was saddled with an enormous bill that she could not pay and she was bankrupted, so the next time when she had a similar episode she did not go to the emergency room and as a result she died."
The uninsured are four times less likely to have a general practitioner than the insured. Uninsured adults are also 30 percent less likely to have had a checkup in the last year and are more likely to be diagnosed with a disease in an advanced stage.
The problem isn't limited to solely the uninsured. During the conference call Dr. Barbara Horner-Ibler, medical director at the Bread of Healing Clinic in Milwaukee, said high deductibles are keeping some of the insured from seeking treatment, "we also have the issue now of not just the uninsured, but patients who have high deductible plans who are delaying care because they do not have access and the access that they do have is much too expensive for them to afford on their budget."