Lack of health insurance a killer?
09 04 08 - 14:36
Almost one working-age South Dakotan dies each week because of a lack of health insurance, according to a report.
But Doneen Hollingsworth, secretary of the South Dakota Health Department, says she isn't so sure about that.
"To me it would be a stretch to equate a lack of insurance with mortality - to make that direct assumption," Hollingsworth said.
The estimate is in a 50-state report from Families USA, described as a nonpartisan national organization for health care consumers.
The report, released Tuesday, states that 13.4 percent of the 389,000 South Dakotans ages of 25 to 64 in 2006 were uninsured.
But Hollingsworth said a statewide survey done last May for a task force that studied health coverage found that 9 percent of South Dakota adults were uninsured.
A similar survey done in 2004 reported 8.5 percent, and the first one, in 2001, found that 8.1 percent were not insured, she said. The random telephone surveys were done by a professional firm, Hollingsworth added.
Families USA developed its state-by-state estimates based on two earlier national reports and U.S. Census data.
According to the Census Bureau, an average of 11.6 percent of South Dakotans were without health insurance from 2004-2006. But Hollingsworth said health departments in many states know that the Census estimates are high.
"They use national estimates and even population estimates. We've always known ... that that census data is high," she said. The Families USA report estimates that nearly 300 South Dakotans in the 25-64 age group died between 2000 and 2006 because they did not have health insurance.
"That's a stretch to me," Hollingsworth said. No matter the actual numbers, Ron Pollack of Families USA said people without insurance often forgo checkups, screenings and other preventive care.
"Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of people to an early death simply because they don't have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors," he said.