The obvious conclusion is that they show up in the emergency room long
after they should have seen a primary care physician...


An analysis of 687,091 patients who visited trauma centers nationwide
from 2002 to 2006 found that the odds of dying from injuries were
almost twice as high for the uninsured than for patients with private
insurance, researchers reported in Archives of Surgery.

Trauma physicians said they were surprised by the findings, even
though a slew of studies had previously documented the ill effects of
going without health coverage. Uninsured patients are less likely to
be screened for certain cancers or to be admitted to specialty
hospitals for procedures such as heart bypass surgery. Overall, about
18,000 deaths each year have been traced to a lack of health
insurance....

The research team from Harvard University and Brigham and Women's
Hospital in Boston used information from 1,154 U.S. hospitals that
contribute to the National Trauma Data Bank. The team found that
patients enrolled in commercial health plans, health maintenance
organizations or Medicaid had an equal risk of death from traumatic
injuries when the patients' age, gender, race and severity of injury
were taken into account.

The risk of death was 56% higher for patients covered by Medicare,
perhaps because the government health plan includes many people with
long-term disabilities, said Dr. Heather Rosen, who led the study
while she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School.

The risk of death was 80% higher for patients without any insurance,
the report said.