No, You Can’t Just Go to the Emergency Room—Unless You Want to Die

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/emergency-rooms-instead-health-insurance

By Tim Murphy
| Fri Oct. 18, 2013

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But by the time the uninsured get to the emergency room, the damage has already been done. According to a study from Harvard Medical School, someone dies as a consequence of not having health insurance about once every 12 minutes in the United States, because they aren't able to seek basic primary care treatment that can prevent more serious problems. (About 9,000 Texans will die each year as a result of Gov. Rick Perry's rejection of the Medicaid expansion, according to an analysis by the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.) But Barbour and his colleagues missed the broader economic point: Someone has to pay for emergency room visits. Emergency care can help literally stop the bleeding—it did in my case. But it's expensive, and it's not a substitute for regular primary care or health insurance.

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A 2012 study from the Commonwealth Fund found that 51 percent of uninsured young adults—the healthiest age group in the United States—had trouble paying medical bills.

So if you're uninsured and can afford a basic plan, you should get insured—because while your odds of going to the emergency room on any given day are statistically low, your odds of being financially ruined if you do are quite high. Otherwise, it just might cost you the arm and a leg you were trying to save.


http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/news/economy/health-care-cost/

Millions can't afford to go to the doctor

By Tami Luhby @Luhby April 26, 2013

Some 80 million people, around 43% of America's working-age adults, didn't go to the doctor or access other medical services last year because of the cost, according to the Commonwealth Fund's Biennial Health Insurance Survey, released Friday. That's up from 75 million people two years ago and 63 million in 2003.

Not surprisingly, those who were uninsured or had inadequate health insurance were most likely to have trouble affording care. But 28% of working-age adults with good insurance also had to forgo treatment because of the price.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/romney-says-people-don-t-die-because-they-lack-insurance-here-s-why-he-s-wrong

Brian Beutler – October 12, 2012

In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio published Thursday, Mitt Romney repeated a claim that already got him in trouble once this cycle and has reflects an enduring belief among Republicans: that people in the U.S. don't die because they lack health insurance.

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There's just one problem: It's not true.

Numerous studies over the past 10 years conclude that tens of thousands of Americans die each year because they lack insurance.

A 2009 study conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, and published in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that "[l]ack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year in the United States, more than those caused by kidney disease. ... The increased risk of death attributable to uninsurance suggests that alternative measures of access to medical care for the uninsured, such as community health centers, do not provide the protection of private health insurance."

A 2012 report by the health care reform advocacy group Families USA concluded that 26,100 people died prematurely in America in 2010 due to lack of insurance. That report extrapolated from a 2002 Institute of Medicine study -- conducted when the uninsurance rate was lower -- which concluded that 18,000 people died prematurely because they weren't covered.

In a 2009 update, the IOM concluded that uninsured patients are at higher risk of mortality or poor health outcomes in the aftermath of both acute medical issues (heart attacks, serious injury, stroke) and chronic ones (cancer, diabetes).

In 2008, the Urban Institute's Stan Dorn concluded that "[b]ased on the IOM's methodology and subsequent Census Bureau estimates of insurance coverage, 137,000 people died from 2000 through 2006 because they lacked health insurance, including 22,000 people in 2006. Much subsequent research has continued to confirm the link between insurance and mortality risk described by IOM. In fact, subsequent studies and analysis suggest that, if anything, the IOM methodology may underestimate the number of deaths that result from a lack of insurance coverage."

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Dorn noted that other studies focusing on particular ailments make the link between uninsurance and death quite clear. "We know that women with cervical cancer who are uninsured get their cancer detected later.... We know that people with heart disease don't take their medicine because they can't afford it...and sometimes die."

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