Uninsured patients are 50 percent more likely to die of traumatic injuries than those with health insurance.

David Noonan
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 10, 2008

"Drawing on the National Trauma Data Bank, which collects information from approximately 700 U.S. trauma centers and hospital emergency departments, Haider and his colleagues analyzed almost 430,000 moderate to severe cases of traumatic injury (from auto accidents, gunshots and other causes) treated between 2001 and 2005. Controlling for age, gender, type and severity of injury, they found that, overall, uninsured patients were 50 percent more likely to die from their injuries than insured patients. Among white patients, the mortality rate for those with insurance was 4.2 percent, compared with 7.9 percent for the uninsured. The numbers for minorities were worse. Uninsured African-Americans died at more than double the rate of the insured, 11.4 percent to 4.9 percent. And while 6.3 percent of insured Hispanic patients died after traumatic injury, the rate for uninsured Hispanics was 11.3 percent."

The article offers some suggestions about why the difference appears, with one likely one being that the uninsured are much more likely to have pre-existing untreated other conditions that make emergency trauma treatment more difficult and/or less likely to be successful. It appears to consider only deaths while still under emergency care(?).

John