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   From: ciceroii@rogers.com   
      
   Here's proof!   
      
   Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance   
   Thu Sep 17, 2009 6:11pm EDT   
      
   By Susan Heavey   
      
   WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year   
   -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and   
   can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis   
   released on Thursday.   
      
   "We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk   
   driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study   
   and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with   
   Reuters.   
      
   Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health   
   insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.   
      
   The findings come amid a fierce debate over Democrats' efforts to reform the   
   nation's $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry by expanding coverage and   
   reducing healthcare costs.   
      
   President Barack Obama's has made the overhaul a top domestic policy priority,   
   but his plan has been besieged by critics and slowed by intense political   
   battles in Congress, with the insurance and healthcare industries fighting some   
   parts of the plan.   
      
   The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the   
   online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by   
   Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or   
   "single-payer" health insurance.   
      
   An similar study in 1993 found those without insurance had a 25 percent greater   
   risk of death, according to the Harvard group. The Institute of Medicine later   
   used that data in its 2002 estimate showing about 18,000 people a year died   
   because they lacked coverage.   
      
   Part of the increased risk now is due to the growing ranks of the uninsured,   
   Himmelstein said. Roughly 46.3 million people in the United States lacked   
   coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, up from 45.7   
   million in 2007.   
      
   Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get good   
   care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back across the   
   country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he said.   
      
   Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that without   
   proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from complications   
   associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.   
      
   Some critics called the study flawed.   
      
   The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank that backs a   
   free-market approach to health care, said researchers overstated the death risk   
   and did not track how long subjects were uninsured.   
      
   Woolhandler said that while Physicians for a National Health Program supports   
   government-backed coverage, the Harvard study's six researchers closely   
   followed   
   the methodology used in the 1993 study conducted by researchers in the federal   
   government as well as the University of Rochester in New York.   
      
   The Harvard researchers analyzed data on about 9,000 patients tracked by the   
   U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health   
   Statistics through the year 2000. They excluded older Americans because those   
   aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S. Medicare insurance program.   
      
   "For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get   
   health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is   
   supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and   
   a   
   primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   
      
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