Does The Lack Of Insurance Impose Higher Mortality

Does the Lack of Insurance Impose Higher Mortality?

How many people die from lack of insurance? It's a question not often disputed as much as the question “how many people are without insurance?” But it turns out to be really difficult to find out how many people die uninsured. Studies were done to determine the number; the most recent one found that insurance has no effect at all, while other studies say that it numbered to tens of thousands. Some people can't help but be doubtful of the numbers. Some studies are done shadily, with the authors influenced by political beliefs. The criteria for these studies conspire to produce the author's desired numbers for their own interest. All the studies seem to be affected with a measure of bias.

There are factors why people end up uninsured, most of them reciprocates poorer health results, and not of them ended up being registered in the surveys. For example, the Institure of Medicine and the Urban Institute's study showed that being on a government health program constitutes the highest mortality, not the lack of insurance. This is true even if the authors initiated some controls on their studies. Is Medicaid, then, killing people? It might be possible but not really true. The paper failed to point out that Medicare and Medicaid patients have higher rates of disability. It might be that the study looked at patients taken to the Emergency Rooms which showed a large number of uninsured patients. But this does not show that lacking insurance may result in higher mortality, merely, it might be showing us that uninsured people have more factors that cause them to have poorer health results.

This doesn't ensure that no one dies from being uninsured. Even if the facts are unclear and the studies do not agree with each other, we should be cautious about saying that a lot of people die from lack of insurance because the truth is we don and we may never find out.

VIA theatlantic

Keyword: insurance leads