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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Dad’s Life or Yours?

Their dad dying of kidney failure, his two sons can't donate to save him because they'll lose their insurance. And that means...
NYTimes.com: "After all, new research suggests that lack of insurance increases a working-age person’s risk of dying in any given year by 40 percent"

2 comments:

rick said...

As far as I can tell (via google), the study states that people who do not have private insurance are 40% more likely to die than people who do have insurance.

This would make sense, since many of the uninsured are too sick to qualify. It is not clear that being uninsured caused them to be sick (though intuitively we might think it would make them sicker, but perhaps not that whole 40% sicker).

Without reading the study it is hard to be sure, but this sure looks like a correlation/causation mixup.

rick said...

I was wrong about this. The study did correct for baseline health status, such that equally sick people are more likely to die without insurance.