Johns Hopkins: Higher Rate of Death Among Uninsured Children
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November 4, 2009
CHARLESTON, W. Va. - After an extensive examination of hospital records from 37 states, researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center have concluded that uninsured children are 60 percent more likely to die after being admitted to a hospital than those who have health insurance.
The study's lead author, Dr. Fizan Abdullah, says his team examined medical records from 1988 to 2005 and found nearly 1,000 more uninsured children died each year, compared to their insured peers.
"Analyzing the hospitalizations of 23 million children over the 18 years, children who did not have insurance were 1.6 times as likely as children who were insured to die during the period of the study."
Abdullah, a pediatric surgeon, acknowledges it is difficult to pinpoint why uninsured children are more likely to die, although the hospital records provide some clues. Such details as the length of stay and the amount of care provided suggest to him that the problems are similar to those that threaten adults without insurance: They tend to receive less preventive care, and they delay seeing a doctor until a medical problem has become a crisis.
"Although these data are from in the hospital, the impact of not being insured occurred prior to the hospital, delaying entry of those patients into the health care system because of financial reasons."
If the definition of uninsured children is broadened to include those who were uninsured but then obtained coverage through government programs, like Medicaid or S-CHIP, after being admitted to the hospital, the death toll would have been more than twice as high, adds Abdullah.
"If you run the simulation utilizing that definition, then in fact, 39,000 children over the 18-year period of the study could have done significantly better, or been saved."
Some Republican members of Congress have questioned other studies that cite higher death rates among the uninsured, and also have suggested that health care reforms making lower-cost insurance available to more Americans might be steering the nation toward socialism. However, Abdullah believes the policy implications of his study are clear.
More information about the research can be viewed online, at www.hopkinschildrens.org.