Uninsured trauma patients are much more likely to die
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-trauma-uninsured17-2009nov17,0,4308260.story
The risk of death was 56% higher for patients covered by Medicare, perhaps because the government health plan includes many people with long-term disabilities, said Dr. Heather Rosen, who led the study while she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School.
The risk of death was 80% higher for patients without any insurance, the report said.
The researchers also did a separate analysis of 209,702 trauma patients ages 18 to 30 because they were less likely to have chronic health conditions that might complicate recovery. Among these younger patients, the risk of death was 89% higher for the uninsured, the study found.