Report: Uninsured Hospitalized Children Face a 6o Percent Increased Risk of Dying

Strage Degli Innicenti, detail; Guido Reni (1611-1612)

Sometimes the numbers speak louder than words, and the words are just painful to hear: the New York Times’ Prescriptions reports that

Researchers analyzed data from more than 23 million children’s hospitalizations from 1988 to 2005.

Uninsured children who wind up in the hospital are much more likely to die than children covered by either private or government insurance plans, according to one of the first studies to assess the impact of insurance coverage on hospitalized children.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center analyzed data from more than 23 million children’s hospitalizations in 37 states from 1988 to 2005. Compared with insured children, uninsured children faced a 60 percent increased risk of dying, the researchers found.

On a regular basis writers on this blog have discussed health reform as a moral imperative: citing religious doctrine, philosophers, economists and statistics to show that health care, unlike the purchase of automobiles and designer shoes, is not correctly a conventional aspect of a market economy– that the distribution of healing and life itself should not be premised upon who is the best capitalist, or, for that matter, the child of the best capitalist. That uninsured hospitalized children face a 6o percent increased risk of dying says that in a way that I simply cannot add to. Lack of insurance kills.

The Times noted that “Although the research was not set up to identify why uninsured children were more likely to die, it found that they were more likely to gain access to care through the emergency room, suggesting they might have more advanced disease by the time they were hospitalized.”

According to the Times the study showed that “uninsured children were in the hospital, on average, for less than a day when they died.”

Which is to say that it was too late by the time they got there.

The Times noted that “Alison Buist, director of child health at the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization,” said in response to the study’s findings:

If you wait until a child gets care at a hospital, you have missed an opportunity to get them the types of screening and preventive services that prevent them from getting to that level of severity to begin with.

The Times further noted that

The most common reasons for children being hospitalized were complications from birth, pneumonia and asthma. The study found that the reasons did not differ depending on insurance status.

Read the full NY Times article here.
Read the Report here.