Dying For Coverage

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Advocacy group Families USA has put out a shocking report (PDF), "Dying For Coverage," detailing how Californians are impacted by a lack of health insurance.  The number "47 million" that designates Americans without health insurance is too abstract and detached from meaning.  Californians are dying because of their inability to afford or acquire insurance.

? Families USA estimates that more than eight working-age Californians die each day

due to lack of health insurance (approximately 3,100 people in 2006).

? Between 2000 and 2006, the estimated number of adults between the ages of 25

and 64 in California who died because they did not have health insurance was

nearly 19,900.

?Across the United States, in 2006, twice as many people died from lack of health

insurance as died from homicide.