By Viji Sundaram
June 21, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- SAN FRANCISCO – As the nation anxiously awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the health care reform law that guarantees health coverage for all Americans, a study released today shows that California has the highest number of people who die prematurely each year because they do not have health insurance.
In 2010 alone, about 3,164 Californians between the ages of 25 and 64 died prematurely for lack of health insurance, said the study released by Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers. That translates to about 61 Californians every week. Nationwide, 26,000 Americans in that same age group, died last year for the same reason.
“The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed by Congress to address an American tragedy and an American shame,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said today during a media teleconference. “The fact remains that for the millions of Americans without health coverage, only the Affordable Care Act offers the promise of access to affordable coverage and to a longer and healthier life.”
Since it was signed into law in March 2014, a number of states have challenged the constitutionality of some of the provisions in the ACA, particularly one requiring all Americans to have health insurance. Nationwide, there are currently 50 million of them who don’t, nearly 7 million of them in California. The high court is expected to announce its decision any day now.
Between 2005 and 2010, the number of people who died prematurely due to a lack of health coverage each year rose from 20,350 to 26,100 nationwide, the study indicated. And between 2005 and 2010, the total number of people who died prematurely due to a lack of health coverage was 134,120.
The Families USA study applied the groundbreaking methodology developed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002 to determine mortality data on a state-by-state basis.
High as the newly-released figures are, they are conservative because researchers for the IOM study did not include children and young adults under 25, noted Pollack.
