[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

They only stratified the study by age? No freaking wonder they got higher mortality rates for the uninsured. Mortality goes up as income goes down. You could try to fool yourself by thinking it's primarily due to lack of access to health insurance, but it's more closely tied to thing such as (not ordered by importance)

1. Higher homicide rate
2. Higher substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, smoking, etc.)
3. Poorer nutrition, exercise

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showpos...2&postcount=36

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411...ured_dying.pdf

Since a higher percentage of uninsured are poor, unless you stratify your sample by household income, you are going to get some seriously skewed results.

Good point.

From the article:

Another study using Health and Retirement Survey data for adults age 55–64 found that, after controlling for socioeconomic status and other factors, uninsurance increased such older adults’ risk of dying over an eight-year period from 7.5 percent to 10.5 percent. The study thus estimated that, among such near-elderly adults alone, more than 13,000 people die every year due to uninsurance, “plac[ing] uninsurance third on a list of leading causes of death for this age group, below only heart disease and cancer” (McWilliams et al. 2004).