Lack of Insurance Puts Kids in Peril

Nearly 17,000 deaths of hospitalized children might have been prevented by having insurance over a span of 18 years, researchers from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore estimate in a new study.

Researcher Fizan Abdullah, MD, PhD, assistant professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, says the large study shows that “if you are a child without insurance, if you’re seriously ill and end up in the hospital, you are 60% more likely to die than the sick child in the next room who has insurance.” The research is being published in the Oct. 30 Journal of Public Health.

Abdullah and colleagues analyzed 23 million pediatric inpatient hospital records from 37 states covering the years 1988 to 2005, comparing the risk of death of children with insurance to those without it.