Does Health Insurance Do More Than Keep You Out Of Bankruptcy?
The trending topic in social media and news reports right now is the growing number of uninsured people in America, and because they get emergency care anyway, they’re not that bad off. Well, stop the presses. I have yet to see an article that discusses the discrepancy of care between the insured and uninsured.
The fact is, if you don’t have insurance, the hospital can’t turn you away for emergency care, but that care doesn’t have to be as complete as an insured person. One study found that “the uninsured were 59% more likely to die from acute MI [heart attack] and 56% more likely to die from stroke compared with the privately insured”, Dr. Omar Hasan and his colleagues reported(1)
Think about this: You show up with a massive headache, the ER does tests and find a massive brain tumor. If you have health insurance (or can show you have a million bucks in the bank), they will rush you to surgery and do everything they can to save you, costs be damned. However, if you don’t have health insurance, they are going to start a morphine drip and make you comfortable. They will probably ship you to Parkland Hospital(the Dallas County public hospital) where they may or may not help you. Don’t kid yourself – if you ran the hospital, you would do the same thing. It’s not cruel, it’s reality; it takes money to provide care, and hospitals are not free clinics. And in case you think this is a good reason for a single payer system, the report also concludes “Patients on Medicaid were 83% more likely to die from acute MI, 32% more likely to die from stroke, and 41% more likely to die from pneumonia”. No thanks, I’ll keep my private insurance.
Having insurance does more than keep you out of bankruptcy; it can save your life. Keep this in mind as you read the stories that ignore this fact, and consider the treatment between the insured and uninsured equally.
So will Obamacare help with this? Maybe yes, Maybe no. If you happen to get sick during the open enrollment period you will be able to get insurance. You may have to wait 30 days, but you will be able to get it. Outside of open enrollment, you will have to have a life changing event, such as marriage. But more on the in a later article
1. Hasan, O., Orav, E. J. and Hicks, L. S. (2010), Insurance status and hospital care for myocardial infarction, stroke, and pneumonia. J. Hosp. Med., 5: 452-459. doi: 10.1002/jhm.687