New Harvard Study -- One American Dies Every 12 Minutes Because They Don't Have Health Insurance

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One American dies every 12 minutes because they don't have health insurance, according to a new Harvard study in the American Journal of Public Health.  That's 44,789 preventable - or "excess" - deaths every year because people don't have affordable health insurance.

"Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease," according to the study which was conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance.

Uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, the new study found, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993. 

Overall, 15.4% of Americans don't have health insurance.

"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.  Himmelstein and his wife, study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, founded Physicians for a National Health Program.

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