250 State Deaths Yearly Blamed on Insurance Gap

Nearly five people die each week in Wisconsin because they don't have health insurance, according to an estimate released Tuesday by a national group that supports universal coverage.

That figure - roughly 250 people a year - is based on an update of an estimate released in 2002 by the Institute of Medicine, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Len Nichols, a health care economist at the New America Foundation, described the Institute of Medicine estimate as a "statistical guess" at a conference on insurance coverage in December.

But Nichols also said, "I don't think there's anybody who actually treats the uninsured in real life who would argue with the fact that people in our country are dying because they don't have access to health care."