Published 18 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3838
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3838

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Lack of health insurance leads to 45 000 excess deaths in US

Jeanne Lenzer

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Researchers at Harvard University report that lack of health insurance is taking a huge toll on US citizens and is associated with 45 000 excess deaths annually among those aged 18 to 64 years, even after controlling for factors such as smoking, obesity, race and ethnicity, income, and alcohol use.

The study, published on 17 September in the American Journal of Public Health, (www.ajph.org/) updates a 2002 report by the Institute of Medicine that concluded there were 18 314 excess deaths among the uninsured.

The Harvard researchers wanted to update the Institute’s report, which relied on data that are over 20 years old. The increase in deaths is caused by changes in "medical therapeutics and the demography of the uninsured," they say.

David U Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the report, says that the number of people without health insurance . . . [Full text of this article]


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