Friday, September 18, 2009

No insurance = death?

Have you heard? Being uninsured could kill you.

A recent study shows that people who have no health insurance are 40 percent more likely to die than those who are insured—that translates to 45,000 Americans dying each year because they don’t have health insurance.

To arrive at this number, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance examined a group of 9,000 people for six years and kept track of their overall health. “The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health,” lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper said in a statement.

This study comes right after a report by the U.S. Treasury that followed 17,000 Americans for a decade and found that half of working-age adults can expect to lose their insurance at some point in the next 10 years.

With all this grim news, I’m happy medical tourism companies like MedTrava can offer Americans affordable health care abroad. There’s no reason why anybody should put off needed surgeries or even a comprehensive diagnostic exam when there are alternatives almost anyone can afford.