Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Health Insurance

HEALTH INSURANCE: A new report by a medical-consumer nonprofit group says about 1,000 working-age
North Carolinians died in 2006 as a direct result of lacking health insurance. The group, Families USA, followed
up on two earlier national studies to produce the report examining the link between lack of health insurance and
premature death. Between 2000 and 2006, about 5,600 North Carolinians between the ages of 25 and 64 died
because of lack of health insurance, Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a teleconference.
People without health insurance tend to have more trouble than insured people in getting primary and
preventative medical care and are more likely than insured people not to have illnesses such as cancer
discovered until they are in advanced stages. They are also less likely than insured people to be able to afford
prescriptions they may need to keep themselves health.
The Families USA report follows up on a national report by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National
Academies of Science, an independent group that advises Congress on scientific and technical matters. That
2002 report, "Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late," found that in 2000 roughly 18,000 people ages 25-64
died nationwide because they lacked health insurance. A later update of that research by the nonprofit Urban
Institute found that in 2006, about 22,000 people in that age group died for lack of health coverage. Families
USA used the two groups' methodologies to examine data state by state, taking into account not only state
population but also the percentage of each state's working-age population that lacked health insurance.
California led the nation with roughly eight people dying per day for lack of health insurance, Pollack said. (THE
NEWS & RECORD, 5/04/08).

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