Lack Of Insurance Costs Lives

There are nearly 44 million people in the United States that don't have health insurance and are unable to get any. Since I was forced to retire a couple of months ago, I am one of those people. Sadly, thousands more join us each week.

So I wasn't particularly happy to see the results of a new Harvard study on the effects of not having health insurance published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study basically says that not having health insurance is hazardous to a person's health. In fact, people without insurance face a 40% higher chance of dying than those who have insurance.

About 45,000 people die each year because they don't have any health insurance -- that's one person every 12 minutes. These are not people who have lived with insurance. According to the study, these people definitely would have lived if they'd had insurance good enough to provide them with decent health care.

There are those who would disagree and say that everyone has access to emergency room and clinic care. There are some problems with this argument. First, many public hospitals and clinics are closing their doors or scaling back on the care they can offer. Second, these facilities cannot offer continuing care for diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Third, by the time people are sick enough to go to an emergency room, many times their disease has progressed too far to treat effectively.

I wish I could say the Baucus Bill coming out of the Senate Finance Committee would solve this problem, but I don't believe it will. It depends totally on providing private insurance for everyone, with the government supposedly helping those who cannot afford it.

Even with the current costs of private insurance (and not taking into account the huge rises in premium costs each year), I'm not at all sure the government assistance offered will be enough to cover everyone. I would bet against it.

The only thing that is sure about the Baucus Bill is that it would provide the private insurance companies with a huge new payday. And that's not good enough. We need some people in Congress who care more about the health care for American citizens than the bottom line for private insurance companies. I fear that part of my tax money will be spent on private insurance premiums, and I still will be without health insurance.

We need a public health insurance option to cover those who cannot afford private insurance. Anything less will simply not solve the problems endemic in out health care system.