Lack of insurance is lethal for injured children
Injured kids: no insurance, no chance?
Florida children who are hospitalized without insurance are more that twice as likely to die there, a study shows.
By Lisa Greene
St. Petersburg Times
October 4, 2005
Children stream into Florida hospitals every day after falling off bicycles or into swimming pools, being hurt in car wrecks or at the hands of a violent adult.
Whether they have insurance could in part foreshadow how well they will fare.
Children in Florida who enter the hospital without health insurance are more than twice as likely to die there as children with private health insurance or public insurance such as Medicaid, according to a new study by local researchers.
Of the nearly 11,000 children hospitalized in Florida with injuries in 2002, 131 died. About 18 percent of those deaths were uninsured patients, even though those patients made up only 8.5 percent of hospitalizations. Researchers released the findings Monday in a report produced by All Children’s Hospital, the Florida Suncoast SAFE KIDS Coalition and USF Health.
Researchers weren’t sure why but were concerned about the disparity and were applying for grant money to do another study.
These children are most likely in families of the working poor - those whose parents make too little to afford private insurance but too much for the children to be covered by Medicaid. For now, researchers can only guess at disturbing possibilities:
—There might be something different about the way these children are hurt. Maybe they’re in older cars that don’t protect them as well in accidents. Maybe their places to play aren’t as safe. Maybe they’re more likely to be abused.
—Parents of children with insurance may be more willing to rush their child to the emergency room after an injury just in case, while parents without might wait longer to see if the child is seriously hurt or not have a car to drive to the hospital.
—The children might be treated differently after they arrive at the hospital. Emergency rooms are required to treat patients regardless of whether they can pay, but studies have shown differences in outcomes for some medical conditions based on who has insurance.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/04/State/Injured_kids__no_insu.shtml
And…
Care without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late
Institute of Medicine
The uninsured more often… receive fewer diagnostic and treatment services after a traumatic injury or a heart attack, resulting in an increased risk of death even when in the hospital.
http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/4/160/0.pdf
Comment: The authors of this report are careful to point out that, although the lack of insurance is correlated with twice the risk of death in children with trauma, the cause of this higher mortality was not established.
Opponents of insurance reform will undoubtedly dismiss this study with their usual rhetoric. “Everyone gets the care they need whether they’re insured or not, and that is certainly always true for emergencies.” They will also resort to blaming the victim. “These people don’t take care of their kids. They don’t fasten their seatbelts. They don’t watch their kids around pools or on the playground.”
Everyone would agree that injury prevention efforts must be expanded, both in design and education. No matter how effective these measures are, some injuries are inevitable since people and systems are never perfect. The “blame the victim” mentality needs to be shifted to a “let’s do all we can to prevent injuries” mentality.
As far as everyone getting the care they need, innumerable studies have confirmed that the uninsured do not. The Institute of Medicine report confirms that uninsured trauma victims taken to hospitals do not receive as much care as the insured, and death rates are higher.
Lack of insurance kills children. How much longer are we going to tolerate this entirely preventable cause of death? They may be the victims, but we have only ourselves to blame.