New Report Tallies Likely NM Deaths Due to Lack of Health Coverage

From Families USA:
Five people die each week in New Mexico because they don’t have health insurance, says a new report by Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers. The Families USA report, the first-ever state-specific report of this type, is based on a groundbreaking national study by the Institute of Medicine, which in 2002 forged the direct link between a lack of health coverage and deaths from health-related causes. (Read the entire report, Dying for Coverage in New Mexico.)

“Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of New Mexicans to an early death simply because they don’t have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors,” Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said today. “The conclusions are sadly clear—a lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many New Mexicans. Health insurance really matters in how people make their health care decisions,” Pollack said. “We know that people without insurance often forgo checkups, screenings, and other preventive care.”

As a result, he said, uninsured adults are more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer, in an advanced stage, which greatly reduces their chance of survival. The Institute of Medicine found that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance.

Another recent academic study found that uninsured adults between the ages of 55 and 64 are even more likely to die prematurely. For this group, a lack of health insurance is the third leading cause of death, following heart disease and cancer.

The Families USA report for New Mexico makes three specific points about uninsured adults:

• Families USA estimates that five working-age New Mexicans die each week due to lack of health insurance (approximately 260 people in 2006).
• Between 2000 and 2006, the estimated number of adults between the ages of 25 and 64 in New Mexico who died because they did not have health insurance was nearly 1,600.
• Across the United States, in 2006, twice as many people in that same age category died from a lack of health insurance as died from homicide.

“Too many New Mexicans are suffering because they lack access to life-saving health care,” U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) said today. “This growing crisis is made worse by the difficult economic times families are facing. We must find a way to tackle the problem of the uninsured.”

In its 2002 report, the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 adults nationwide died in 2000 because they did not have health insurance. That estimate was later updated by the Urban Institute, which reported that at least 22,000 adults died in 2006 due to a lack of health insurance.

Families USA is the national organization for health care consumers. It is nonprofit and nonpartisan and advocates for high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

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