John Hopkins reports no health insurance may have caused death for 17,000 U.S. children

October 31, 2009 by Cathy Ribble  
Filed under: News

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A new report from researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore estimates that 17,000 United States children may have died over a 20-year period because they did not have health insurance.  The Journal of Public Health article was published yesterday online.

David C. Chang, co-director of John Hopkins pediatric surgery outcomes research group, joined Dr. Fizan Abdullah and other colleagues to examine records from more than 23 million hospitalizations of people younger than 18 years of age.

They examined records for an 18-year period of time ending in 2005.  During that time 117 million children were hospitalized, and nearly 6 million of those kids were uninsured at the time of admission.  The study reports that 38,649 children died while hospitalized.

After adjustments for differences in race and gender, the report concludes that uninsured kids are 37.8 percent more likely to die than kids with insurance coverage.

“This is actually something we as a society…can chose to do something about,” said Dr.Chang.  “It’s literally with the stroke of somebody’s pen, this could be changed.”  He believes that health insurance has a dramatic impact on health outcomes.

Although the study does not prove conclusively that being uninsured boosts a child’s mortality risk, it does suggest there is at least a strong correlation between the two.

Chang went on to say, “I think the message is insurance is a choice we can make as a society, and this is something that we should consider.”

Past data from the U.S. Institute of Medicine has suggested that people who are uninsured have a higher mortality rate, but Bruce Lesley, president of the bipartisan child and family advocacy group First Focus, believes that the data revealed in this new report is shocking and points to a need for national health reform.

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