Study: No insurance a killer

A group that favors health care reform released disturbing estimates Thursday on premature deaths among people who lack insurance.

The consumer group, Families USA, said the failure to pass health reforms will lead to 34,600 premature deaths in California for people ages 25 to 64 in the next 10 years.

The report "Lives on the Line: The Deadly Cost of Delaying Reform" said it used the methods of previous studies on the perils of living without health insurance in the United States.

The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, found that 18,000 uninsured Americans died prematurely in 2000.

The institute's series of studies contested notions that the uninsured are well cared for by emergency services and government programs. Its 2002 study reported that people without insurance are sick more often, receive medical care that is too little or too late and receive poorer care in hospitals.

The Urban Institute, which focuses research on social and economic issues, estimated 22,000 deaths in 2006 among uninsured Americans with limited access to health care.

Families USA said the national death toll was 290,000 between 1995 and 2009, the 15-year period when Congress was silent about expanding health coverage for the uninsured. None of the studies broke out the data by county.

"Failure to pass health care reform — in effect, doing nothing to make health coverage affordable — results in a huge and terrible cost," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. "The reality is that the failure of Congress to pass health reform has deadly consequences."

The study's release was timed with President Obama's health summit with Republican leaders, seen as an effort to salvage Democratic proposals for extending coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans.

According to news reports, Obama did not bridge the partisan divide at the meeting.

Obama's proposals criticized

Joan Clendenin, vice chairwoman of the Republican Party of Stanislaus County, said the need to make insurance affordable to more Americans is a difficult problem, but the president's latest proposals are not the answer.

"They are not significantly different than what the Democratic-controlled House, the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled White House could not pass last year," she said.

"Republicans believe in the marketplace ... and our basic dispute is that he is proposing more government control of a huge segment of the economy when there are measures that could be taken, such as tort reform and some ability to buy insurance across state lines."

The U.S. Census Bureau 2008 American Community Survey reported that more than 17 percent of Stanislaus County residents live without health insurance. The recent fiscal woes of state and local government have caused a rollback of safety net programs for the county's unemployed and working poor.

Patrick Hutchings of Modesto said he is still hoping for national health reform, because many working adults in the county can't afford insurance but make too much to qualify for public health programs.

His former wife, who lacks insurance, has delayed seeing a doctor for respiratory trouble, he said.

"She can't afford to see a doctor and she can't afford not to," he said. "There are a lot of people who are suffering and deserve to get some medical care."

Families USA estimated there were 38,400 premature deaths among uninsured Californians from 1995 to 2009, followed by Texas with 32,200, Florida with 24,400, New York with 18,800 and Georgia with 10,900.

The estimates are largely based on the Institute of Medicine's research finding that the lack of insurance increases mortality by 25 percent for adults ages 25 to 64, the group said. To come up with estimates, the study also relied on population data, mortality rates and the percentage of uninsured people in each state.

Bee staff writer Ken Carlson can be reached at kcarlson@modbee.com or 578-2321.