Harvard study links 45,000 deaths a year to lack of insurance
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Harvard just released a study that reminds us what the real stakes are in this health care debate. Where are all the right-to-life protesters on this issue? Do you have to be unborn to deserve a fair crack at living?
A new Harvard study estimates that nearly 45,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance — and that’s after other factors like income and unhealthy behaviors are taken into account.
“Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease,” an article by the Cambridge Health Alliance reports.
The study says the uninsured have a 40% higher risk of death than people who have private health insurance — like the insurance you get through your job. Or, to put it another way, a person dies because of a lack of insurance every 12 minutes.
And the coup de grace, from the study’s co-author:
“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, told Reuters. Himmelstein and his wife, study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, founded Physicians for a National Health Program.
Lame example, maybe, but I had a little personal experience with this when I got appendicitis. Because I didn’t have insurance, I put off going to the doctor for three days, despite a persistent abdominal pain that had me literally rolling around in bed, moaning in pain for days, hoping that whatever bad thing I had eaten would hurry up and and work its way through my system. I even drove 18 hours from New York to North Carolina while popping Tylenol the whole way because my then-girlfriend and I had a trip planned to see her father there, and I didn’t want to face the idea that I might be really sick.
It wasn’t until I was hallucinating and shivering, fully clothed beneath piles of blankets and a humid, North Carolina summer night that we decided I had to go to the doctor. When I got there, they said my appendix would have burst if I’d come in a few hours later.
Of course, I was immediately socked with about ten grand in debt for the surgery and one night in the hospital; but, all told, it could have been worse. I’m glad I didn’t have to spend a week in the hospital, for example — which would have been the case had my appendix burst and my body gone septic.
I’m also glad I didn’t die, which also could have happened. 45,000 people a year, it seems, aren’t so lucky.
And, honestly, my example feels trivial compared to the chronic health problems faced by so many Americans each day. This is a life and death issue, and those who would manipulate its terms for political or monetary gain have blood on their hands. Have they not a modicum of conscience, or shame? How did we get so far away from the essentials in this debate?
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Market forces at work, price the sick people out of the system, they go away and die and corporate profits soar, ah capitalism.
Tim,
That people die for lack of medical care in the richest nation ever to exist is a matter of profound national shame, but I think the bigger picture is that Big Health is the source, not the solution, to the problems.
Something like 195,000 people a year die from medical error. It is the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer! We spend 2.5 times per capita of what the UK does on health care. Dr. Andrew Weil predicts that within 7-9 years the health costs for a family of four will be $65,000. When we talk about access for the 40 million without health insurance we might as well be talking about buying every family in the US a 1.1 million-dollar house!
Big Health, SUVs, Big Macs. It’s all made of the same substance. I avoid all three, preferring a healthy lifestyle with very limited medical care, a bike instead of a car for about 100 miles a week, and a plant-based diet.
I’m no physician but there are studies examining whether anti-inflammatories and antibiotics are a better treatment that the routine surgery that people always seem to get, along with the obligatory, “if you had come in just 3 hours later . . .” Cha, cha, cha.
Controlling costs is the way to solve the problem and the public option has/had the leverage needed to get that job done. Dang.
Not sure if I should comment, no expert on anything, just interested.
There are no shortages of problems with the existing system. Personally I don’t see an easy fix with all the big money involved. Congress can debate the issue, but as long as legislators on BOTH SIDES of the aisle are receiving millions in campaign contributions from the very industries they are supposedly suggesting laws to regulate, I fear the outcome will have more to do with dollars behind the scenes then heated debate on the floor.
Three comments for people wiser than me to pursue.
Why is American health care tied to employment? Bad enough losing your job, lost your insurance too, tough luck.
Why do we have to go to a doctor with 8-12 years of education expenses when all we need is a simple procedure? I am quite sure that more than 70% (rhetorical number, probably higher) of the patients a doctor sees could be handled by someone with a great deal less expertise. How many rational people go to an ASME certified mechanic for an oil change?
Thirdly, and more to your point. Why is there such a discrepancy in prices? You paid $10,000 for an appendectomy (you apparently got by cheap by the way, it was $22,000 for a woman in Miami). Medicare allows $4,500. How many business have this dual pricing structure, other than medical? Why?
Again, I am no expert, just interested. Seems to me there are no shortages of problems.
All good points Willard. I’m not sure why health care is tied to employment, probably several reasons. One of the reasons that GM went into bankruptcy is that in Japan and Canada they have universal governmental health care. In the US GM had to pay it and thus the total hourly cost of labor is $70 vs. $45 in Japan. In Japan a governmental committee sets prices. That’s what the public option would open the door on. That’s why we gotta fight for it.
Many doctor’s offices DO operate on a hierarchy of abilities. When my kids are sick I simply make a brief call to the nurse and she tells me what to do and what to watch out for. At other offices I see the nurse-practitioner instead of the doctor for routine procedures.
Yes, yes, yes, the public option would fix the pricing. I’d rather have price fixing by the government than price fixing posing as competition on the part of Big Health. We need prices to be cut about in half, utilization to be both cut for the vast majority, who are over-users, and increased for the 40 million under-users. A good public option would do all that. Obama is one smart dude. But he’ll need our help desperately in facing down Big Health. One in seven dollars is spent on it.
“I’m not sure why health care is tied to employment, probably several reasons.”
Richard Nixon
Brian,
In response to another comment. See in context »Do you have any positive things to add to the discussion? Do you support Obama’s public option, as I do? Do you have a better idea? If so, can we afford it? How would it be paid for?
I don’t buy into the entire “how we pay for it” argument. That argument wasn’t really very important when we went to war in Iraq. But yes I know how we pay for it, we raise taxes. I full support a very robust public option, Medicare for all that want it.
Also I’m not really sure what you mean by “do I have anything positive to add” remark.
In response to another comment. See in context »No, the cost argument wasn’t important went we went to war in Iraq. Now back to the topic. Andrew Weil predicts that medical costs for a family of four will grow from about $30,000 today to over $60,000 within 7-9 years. There’s nothing to buy into or not here. It is utterly impossible to afford those costs. Taxation is not a solution. Governmental price fixing, as I mentioned before, is the means and the public option is the vehicle. In addition, some medical services must be curtailed. Ex: joint replacement after 80 y.o. Liver transplant for alcoholics, etc.
Positive would mean looking for practical, practicable, solutions. I find that your comments mostly concentrate on how bad and badly-motivated people are.
I hope when you’re 80 and if your hip goes you’ll be content to spend your remaining years in a wheel chair and in pain, I am not, if I should live to that age. Arguments about alcoholics receiving liver transplants are just absurd. Active alcoholics are already denied access to the liver transplant list. Having spent a year on the list I know of what you speak (and no my reason for being on the list was not drinking related).
“I find that your comments mostly concentrate on how bad and badly-motivated people are.”
Ok, but frankly I think you’re time would be better spent questioning your own motives since you’re the one willing to let old people suffer in pain and live the life of a cripple. Or for that matter letting people die horrible deaths because you don’t happen to “approve” of how they got sick in the first place.
I’m very sorry about your health situation, Brian. We have a friend with teenage kids and she’s got very serious cancer and I’m filled with sorrow every day.
As to denial of medical services, it has to, and already does, come to that. I don’t concern myself with how people got sick; I concern myself with the prognosis and the costs. Would spending a million dollars on a person to extend their life one more year? one more month? one more day? be worth it? Half the money spent on health care is spent in the last four months of people’s lives. A physician I know calls much of medical practice, “Oh, another acute remunerative procedure.”
I’m content, if not very content, to face my medical issues with acceptance that degeneration and death are the natural course of life.
“I concern myself with the prognosis and the costs. Would spending a million dollars on a person to extend their life one more year? one more month?”
Try finding better examples of those that you’ve sited then. Average hip replacement cost $39,299, in an otherwise health 80 y/o I certainly would say it’s worth it. And apparently you do care how people got sick, you brought up the issue of alcoholics receiving medical care, not me. BTW the average cost of liver transplant ranges between 100,000 and 400,000 dollars, mostly depending on the time the patient was hospitalized prior to receiving the organ. I’m really hard pressed to think of many, if any cases of people receiving a million dollar’s worth of care before passing away. Frankly I don’t really concern myself with the dollar and cents of health care, certainly costs need to be contained and greater minds than mine will figure out how to that while maintaining a sense of compassion. For me this is a matter of national will. We are the richest country on the planet, we are the only industrialized nation who does not have universal health care, it’s a disgrace.
In response to another comment. See in context »Well, yes, there probably are better examples, many of them. But active alcoholics should not get liver transplants.
You know, Brian, I think we substantially agree on all of this. The important thing is that we agree to the cost-containment measures that are necessarily on the way.
Here’s an article on age-based health care rationing that I definitely agree with:
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n3/age.html.
A little morphine goes a long way at making the passage easier for the person and less costly to those who have to pay for it.
I would definitely consider buying out my insurance policy and leaving the money to my family if faced with a costly medical future that promised a greatly diminished quality of life. Basically, I’d not be very interested in a life without being able to bicycle or cook.
Maybe we can just turn all those pesky old people who you feel are sucking the life out of our health care system into soylent green. End of life care is not what’s sucking the system dry, greedy insurance companies are.
In response to another comment. See in context »It’s a vicious cycle. Consumers demand a high level of end of life care and Big Health is happy not only to give it to them but to influence them to want it. We should all set up our own death panels composed of family and friends and opt out as best we can and accept hospice care as soon as we are emotional able to do so.
In response to another comment. See in context »The Jesuits have no problem talking about age-rationed health care as they truly believe in life after death. I think of it more in terms of Life after life. If we don’t believe in some form of eternity then the argument is simple: anything that doesn’t prolong life is evil.
We talk of being a Judeo-Christian nation believing in an afterlife but very few people of whatever belief systems behave as if they truly do.
I just dropped back in to see what was being said and find there is actually somewhat of a discussion going on. Too bad the national debate isn’t as civil.
Thought I would throw out a couple more things just in case anybody actually reads these things.
I keep reading about how the proposed changes in health care reform are going to cost about 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. I have to admit a trillion dollars is an almost inconceivable number to me. It made me think and so I have a couple of observations on that topic that are not being addressed in national debate.
First, how much will the cost of health care increase in that same time period if reform is NOT enacted? I am sure it will be an even higher number. Secondly, one of the points of health care reform should be to LOWER prices. If we could get our per person cost down to the level of other industrialized countries, we would be saving nearly a trillion a year in costs. That would represent a net 9 trillion in savings.
My second observation came as a shock to me when I was researching a statement made my Michael Moore on an interview. (1% of wealthiest people in U.S. control more wealth that 95% on the lower end of the spectrum combined, turns out that number is correct, I couldn’t believe it was that high). Apparently the tax cuts for the super wealthy enacted a few years back has saved the privileged few over 1 trillion dollars a year in taxes. A rescission of just that one policy would provide enough additional revenue to provide universal health care for a full decade. Where is the logic in that?
This has been the most reasoned forum I have seen on the internet. How do we get our voices heard by those in a position to accomplish something?
Spot on Will, we’ve almost spent a trillion dollars in Iraq, as I said in an earlier comment, it’s a matter of national will.
http://costofwar.com/
In response to another comment. See in context »Brian,
In response to another comment. See in context »I just don’t understand this rationale. Since we spent $1 trillion on a stupid and evil war in Iraq, therefore we should spent a stupid extra $1 trillion a year on wasteful health care?
Just because I don’t want to cut off granny’s health care doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about the cost of health care.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for joining in, Willard. If $1 trillion over ten years is inconceivable to you, try wrapping your mind around the idea that the national tab for health care will be around $4-5 trillion a year by about 2016-2018 according to Dr. Andrew Weil. Cost containment through limiting low benefit/high cost care and through price fixing by public option insurance are the only ways to prevent that. I don’t want the rich people paying me back for their tax breaks by funding a corrupt health care system. They probably would just make more money as their health care stock holdings went through the roof. I’d prefer we get a rational system and let them pay us back by tackling global warming and other environmental issues.
In response to another comment. See in context »