Three Connecticut residents die every week because they don’t have health insurance and cannot afford to see doctors for regular checkups, screenings and other preventive care, according to a new report.
The study by Families USA, a nonprofit health care consumers group, says such care is important for catching diseases at an early stage and greatly increases the chances for survival.
In 2006, about 209,000 of the 1.9 million people in Connecticut between the ages of 25 and 64 didn’t have health insurance, and about 150 of them died that year because they lacked coverage, the report says.
More than 1,100 Connecticut residents between 25 and 64 died from 2000 to 2006 because they didn’t have health insurance, Families USA says.
Connecticut Democratic U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy say the study is more evidence that Congress needs to stop dragging its feet on health insurance issues.
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Wake-Up Call
“This is a wake-up call,” DeLauro told reporters in a conference call. “We mount hostilities with other countries. We need to go to war about having health insurance. We can’t afford to wait any longer.”
Congress is considering several proposals to extend coverage to the uninsured, including another attempt to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and a plan to require all Americans to have insurance, the congressmen said.
Murphy called the issue a crisis of both the working poor and the unemployed. He recalled the story of a Connecticut woman who had to have part of her infected leg amputated a few years ago. He said she didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford to see a doctor when the infection was still manageable.
“That is an inhuman way to run a health care system,” Murphy said. “It’s also an incredibly inefficient way to run a health care system.”
Families USA says its report is the first to look at deaths stemming from a lack of health insurance at the state level. The numbers are based on data previously compiled and analyzed by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
“The conclusions are sadly clear: a lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.
