Excess Deaths Due to Lack of Access to Health Care

From coverage of the recent study of Woolhandler, et. al.

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 report 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 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. An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine based on 16 years of data through 1993 found that uninsured people had a 25 percent higher risk of dying than insured people, which translated into 18,000 additional deaths.

I usally quote the 18,000 number as it is from th IOM, a very respected body, but the new figures point to an increase that likely reflects what's going on "on the ground."

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