Study: More Than 6,000 Georgians Died Over 6 Years Due to Lack of Health Insurance

WASHINGTON — More than 19 working-age Georgians die each week because they lack health insurance to pay for proper medical care — about 1,000 lives lost in 2006, a study released Tuesday by an advocacy group for consumer health care found.

Between 2000 and 2006, the estimated number of adults between the ages of 25 and 64 in Georgia who died "because they did not have health insurance" was more than 6,000, according to the report by Families USA. In 2006, nearly 20 percent of the more than 5.2 million Georgians in this age group were uninsured.

"Uninsured Georgians are sicker and die sooner than their insured counterparts," the report said.

"It's absolutely true and it's going to get worse," said the Rev. Tim McDonald of the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and a leader in the Grady Coalition, a group of Grady Memorial Hospital patients, workers and activists. "People are losing their jobs and when they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance."

"Until the state starts investing more in health care, it's going to cost us otherwise," he predicted. "Preventative care is a whole lot cheaper than emergency care."

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine released a report, "Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late," that concluded that 18,000 American adults between the ages of 25 and 64 died in 2000 because they did not have health insurance. The Urban Institute issued a subsequent report that estimated that 22,000 people in this age group died in 2006 because they lacked this coverage.

Nationwide, there were 47 million Americans without health insurance in 2006, the Census Bureau has reported.

The Families USA report, "Dying for Coverage," is a state-by-state analysis of the earlier data from the Institute of Medicine and The Urban Institute. The report's foundation is a finding by the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health care.

Ron Pollock, executive director of Families USA, admitted that there will be skeptics about the science involved.

"You can't make a believer out of someone who is not a believer," he said. But if "you look at the source on this," the initial studies were conducted by an impartial, "prestigious institution."

"Uninsured people suffer significant consequences because of their uninsured status," Pollock said.

He said uninsured people are less likely to get prescription drugs for chronic conditions — diabetes or asthma, for examples — since these treatments are too expensive to pay for out of pocket. Thus they are more likely to die from such diseases.

Likewise, they are less likely to get diagnostic tests until their conditions become life-threatening.

The report said uninsured adults are 30 percent less likely than insured adults to have had a medical check-up in the past year. Uninsured adults are three times as likely to delay seeking medical help (47 percent vs. 15 percent) and four times less likely to have a regular source of health care.

Pollock told of an uninsured woman who had a heart attack and received care in a hospital emergency room. The resulting bill forced her into bankruptcy. So the next time she suffered the same heart attack symptoms, she didn't go to the hospital and died.

Georgia State Sen. Vincent D. Fort, a Democrat from Atlanta and Fulton County, said he is "not surprised" to learn of 19 Georgians dying each week because their lack of health insurance results in a lack of needed medical care.

He said 700 Georgians die each year because of an "underfunded and weak trauma care system."

The state legislature's failure to improve the trauma care system illustrates a "stunning lack of leadership" in solving Georgia's health care problems, he said.

"The leadership of the state failed miserably in a situation that should have been resolved," he said.

Families USA is a liberal-leaning, non-profit advocacy group that The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, calls one of the most effective lobbyists on health care issues.

"On the Democratic side, Pollack is always on the health care front line," The Hill reported. Families USA is "in little danger of losing the Washington left's attention."

Pollock said Families USA does not endorse candidates. But he said the issue of Americans lacking health insurance needs immediate attention.

"Hopefully when the next president and Congress come to Washington in 2009, we will receive that leadership," he said. The problem hits even those people who are insured, he said, because the costs are eventually paid through higher premiums.