Uninsured ER patients twice as likely to die

[sabra]

Source: MSNBC/AP

New study highlights disparity of care for those who don't have coverage

CHICAGO - Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.

The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable.

"This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist.

The study, appearing in the November issue of Archives of Surgery, comes as Congress is debating the expansion of health insurance coverage to millions more Americans. It could add fodder to that debate.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33971846/ns/health-health_care/

[ingac70]

1. Assholes pretending to be surprised. n/t

[shadowknows69]

2. More news from the "No Shit" file.

[inna]

3. see this, too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7026993&mesg_id=7027140

Absolutely mindblowing.

[mstinamotorcity]

4. well golly

don't surprise me one damn bit. Now tell us something we didn't already know.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, sabra.

[mbperrin]

6. Shocked! I'm shocked, I tell you!

Well, maybe not, after a student of mine was shot four times, no insurance, admitted to emergency room, 2 bullets removed with local around entry point, other two not found, sent home after 4 hours, died in his sleep from internal bleeding. One of the "unfound" bullets was in a lung, the other in his colon.

NOW can we have single payer universal healthcare??!!!!!!!!!???????????

[usregimechange]

7. Abstract here:

http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/144/11/1006

[usregimechange]

8. Full text:

http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/144/11/1006

[JNelson6563]

9. Death panels.

[WHAT]

14. Policy...when negligence and incomptence

fail.

[fascisthunter]

10. My Father was Discharged from the Hospital only two days after Brain Surgery

this country is twisted.... no one, nothing is sacred, it's all bought and sold with very little regard for humanity itself. Talk about cannibalism.

[Psephos]

11. Much of that is because the uninsured demographic tends to be less robust or healthy to begin with.

When analyzing the trend, the first conclusion one jumps to is not necessarily the best.

After controlling/normalizing for age, you find higher percentages of people among the uninsured who have poor nutrition, addiction problems, lower income, and neglect of underlying health problems. They also show higher-than-norm rates of destructive or risky behaviors.

This does not and cannot say anything about individual people in the demographic.

[ronnie624]

12. According to the opening article,

"The researchers couldn't pin down the reasons behind the differences they found."

I think I'm gonna go with the Harvard statisticians on this one.

[Psephos]

19. A couple of things to consider.

First, the study looked at a small subset of E.R. cases, specifically those involving serious traumatic injury. These are exactly the cases where underlying general health and robustness prior to injury are factors in recovery. As I said earlier, as a group, the uninsured tend to have lower general health, more lifestyle risk factors, and other negatives compared to the insured.

Second, the article points out that the uninsured tend to live in areas where the hospitals are not as good. That's no different than saying that underprivileged children tend to live in areas where the schools aren't so good. This is certainly a factor.

As for trusting the "Harvard statisticians" and concluding that no more thinking needs to be done by lightweights such as ourselves - I disagree completely. By way of example, I notice that the genius financial statisticians at Harvard lost half of the Harvard endowment in the past few years, putting Harvard into a budget crisis. In general, I find a lot of academics to be more reliant on their theories than on data, especially data that doesn't bolster their theories. Don't know if that's true here or not, but I find it suspicious that they didn't even think of an obvious avenue of investigation.

I worked in an E.R. while in grad school, and I trust what my lyin' eyes saw week after month after year.

[hunter]

13. Have a chronic medical problem... become uninsurable ...

...show up in the ER because you are desperate and have nowhere else to turn...die.

Yep, that sounds like life and death in the USA.

[prolesunited]

16. Actually, this study was much more limited in scope

"with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds"

[question everything]

15. On the one hand: and this is new?

on the other hand, we do need hard date to prove what we all intuitively know.

[superconnected]

17. Actually, I didn't know this - 80% more likely to die if uninsured.

"The researchers took into account the severity of the injuries and the patients' race, gender and age. After those adjustments, they still found the uninsured were 80 percent more likely to die than those with insurance — even low-income patients insured by the government's Medicaid program."

[cutlassmama]

18. How the fuck could this surprise doctors and health care workers?!?!?!

[rocktivity]

20. Candidate for this year's "You Call This NEWS?" award

The "To Figure This Out, You had to do A Freaking STUDY?" division.

Just a while guess here, but maybe it's because uninsured people are sicker when they get to the ER, having had LESS medical care beforehand!

:eyes:
rocktivity