October 28, 2010
Health Insurance and Life Expectancy
By JOHN GOODMAN 
Did you know that Hispanic Americans live longer than non-Hispanic whites? If that doesn't knock your socks off, consider this: American Hispanics are three times as likely to be uninsured as non-Hispanic whites.
If you're still not blown away, maybe you haven’t been following the twists and turns of the health policy debate. As I wrote at my blog the other day, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) discovery that Hispanics (one-third of whom are uninsured) have a life expectancy that is 2 1/2 years longer than whites (90% of whom have health insurance) makes mincemeat out of the oft-repeated idea that the uninsured get less health care and die earlier than everyone else.
In support of the conventional wisdom, for example, the Physicians for a National Health Care Program (PNHCP) went so far as to claim that a whopping 45,000 people die every year because they are uninsured. That figure, repeated as though it were unquestioned fact by President Obama and most of the health care media, is almost as large as the number of American soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam War!
Families USA went so far as to make the astounding claim that 6 people die every day in Florida because they are uninsured. Eight die every day in California; and 25 die in New York. In Texas, the report implies that more people die every two months from lack of health insurance than the number killed at the battle of the Alamo (counting only losses on our side, that is). Nationwide, says the PNHCP, an uninsured person dies every 12 minutes.
With all this carnage, you might wonder whether there are any uninsured people left alive.
All of this nonsense is critiqued here. But don’t get me wrong. One of the joys of health economics is that you just don’t get this kind of entertainment in other economic fields. For sheer comedic amusement, health economics is sui generis.
The latest government report also completely blows out of the water a whole slew of international comparisons that cause a lot of commentators to froth at the mouth. Take the 1,000 or so U.S.-health-care-system-bashing studies, essays and opinion pieces (or is it 10,000? I can't remember) that claim we're getting short-changed because we spend more and die earlier. Turns out, these comparisons were mainly focused on insured people. Had they looked instead at the U.S. ethnic group most likely to be uninsured they would have had to eat their words. American Hispanics probably spend less on health care than people in other developed countries and they live longer!
As the table below shows, American Hispanics outlive Canadians and the British, to say nothing of Germans, the Irish, the Finns and the Belgians. Overall, Hispanics in the United States live a year and a half longer than the OECD average life expectancy. (All numbers are from 2006, to conform to the CDC study.)
Sources: OECD Health Data 2008 and CDC.
It is not known why so many Hispanics are uninsured, but the phenomenon is not explained by lower incomes. Census Bureau statistics show that at every level of income, Hispanics are two to three times as likely to be uninsured as the population as a whole, and the higher the income level, the greater the discrepancy.
Now if we did research at the NCPA the way Families USA does research, we would be claiming that lack of insurance actually makes people live longer! I can see the press release now….."90,000 People Alive Today because They Didn't Insure, Says Study"….. An estimated million, billion, trillion extra life years, all because of….. 12 extra people walk the streets of Florida every day….. That's XXX people who didn’t die every minute…..YYY every second…..ZZZ every nanosecond…..
John C. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.? He is also the Kellye Wright Fellow in health care. The mission of the Wright Fellowship is to promote a more patient-centered, consumer-driven health care system. Dr. Goodman’s health policy blog is considered among the top conservative health care blogs on the internet where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions to health care problems are discussed by top health policy experts from all sides of the political spectrum.
October 28, 2010 in Health insurance, Hispanics, John Goodman | Permalink
Comments
Or,alternatively...If Hispanic Americans had a lower uninsurance rate, the difference between their life expectancy and that of White Non-Hispanics would be even greater.
Posted by: Roger Collier | Oct 28, 2010 5:44:03 PM
This is not news to Americans of Hispanic descent, the reality is that Hispanics have less "Stress".
Thank you,
Rudy Lehder Rivas, President
Hispanic Insure.com
Posted by: Rudy Lehder Rivas | Oct 28, 2010 10:37:47 PM
Happiness is believed to be traversable; this is true to some extent. When a person is happy he has the ability to make others happy too and a person is usually happy when he enjoys good health and has all the required materialistic facilities and company. Well in this article we are going to focus on health of a man which keeps him going and contended. This can make a difference in the environment and create a positive ambience. In order to enjoy such good health and environment there are certain factors explained below.
Habits:
Good habits in an individual can help that person to be contended due to his good deeds. If an adult follows good practices it serves as an inspirational factor to younger members who often notice such deeds. Good habits in terms of health, profession, education and social life can help in attaining good status and contended life. It is habits that determine an individual’s character or personality. It is also a matter of fact that habit persists for a long time and it is difficult to ebb them away; hence it is essential to observe good habits which may be beneficial in all aspects.
Eating Habits:
A fine eating habit is a healthy manner to live contended life. Good nutritional eatables have less or no alternative. It results in good health conditions, longer life span as well as it teaches the younger generation about good nutritional values too. Some basic values such as keeping the hands hygienic before eating your meal, drinking sufficient water and consuming correct foods are good manners to keep yourself fit and healthy. As an adult it is your duty to make a good environment; hence, fine eating habits is a better lifestyle habit.
Posted by: Medexpressrx | Oct 28, 2010 11:07:01 PM
living longer is a matter of having a good lifestyle.socializing with friends and as much as possible staying in the positive outlook in life. and watching what you eat.insured people worry too much about their health and how long they would live. causing them stress which is a sign of early aging.
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Posted by: f.vanderlugt | Oct 29, 2010 2:16:10 AM
If you read the report, it says a couple things worth noting:
(1) The authors say that the mortality advantage observed for Hispanics holds up when you adjust for socioeconomic characteristics - they DON"T say that it disproves the relevance of those factors or that they don't matter. It's more accurate to say that Hispanic mortality appears lower DESPITE the relative levels of disadvantage (including lack of health insurance) among Hispanics, due to factors that the CDC can't account for.
(2) One of those factors they can't account for is what they call the "migration effect" which basically means that the population of Hispanics for whom they have data on health insurance status may be quite dissimilar from those for whom they have mortality data (e.g. Hispanic immigrants may be more likely to have no health insurance, and also more likely to return to their home country before they die). They say there's no definitive evidence of that, although to me it seems plausible - one reason to regard the findings of this study with some caution until more research is done. As they say repeatedly in the article, it's only recently become possible to do analyses like this due to improvements in the collection & coding of ethnicity data, so this whole topic is just beginning to get really rigorous study.
Posted by: TW | Oct 29, 2010 3:48:56 AM
For the record, the argument that Families USA has been making isn't refuted by any of this: evidence that things other than health insurance affect mortality doesn't in any way weaken the argument that having health insurance by itself affects mortality.
Based on your posts here, of which this one's a good example, I think you shouldn't be so sanctimonious about how Families USA uses data. I largely agree with most of their policy positions, yet i'll readily concede that as advocates they can be guilty of using data selectively & over-interpreting findings that happen to support their policy preferences. But you're doing the exact same thing here, and do so regularly on this blog. Actually what you're doing here is worse: you criticize Families USA for over-interpreting research on the insurance-mortality link, in the same post where you're fundamentally misrepresenting both that research and this new research on the ethnicity-mortality link. You're free to speak your mind, but you should be among the last of the regular posters on THCB to be lecturing anyone about argumentative misuse of data.
Posted by: TW | Oct 29, 2010 3:49:33 AM
Hey John, seems most citizens with government run/controlled/single-pay live longer than U.S. citizens. What are we to draw from that - it works at lower cost?
Posted by: Peter | Oct 29, 2010 3:51:26 AM
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