The Impact of Not Having Health Insurance

Because the United States health care system is centered around a third-party payer system -- insurance -- a lack of health insurance can cause medical and financial hardships. There are two types of uninsured people: those who are chronically uninsured, and those who are periodically uninsured due to lapses of employer coverage. Both populations experience very similar difficulties.

High Costs and Lack of Care

• Insurance companies and government health programs bargain with medical providers to arrange pay scales favorable to them. Because of this, medical providers raise rates on people who have no contractual prices set -- primarily the uninsured. The resulting high costs discourage sick people from going to the doctor until health problems reach an unmanageable level, and at this point they often go to the emergency room, which is significantly more expensive than a regular doctor's visit. Others never go to the hospital at all, resulting in secondary problems ranging from loss of work, to death -- due to lack of care.

Unfilled Prescriptions

• Even patients who go to the doctor in a timely fashion may have a different problem -- a lack of money to fill prescriptions. Many doctors use pharmaceutical samples for people who can't afford their medications, and some pharmaceutical companies also have programs to help poor and indigent people afford medication. However, many people choose to eat rather than medicate, resulting in slow, or no, recovery from illnesses.

Loss of Employment

• Those who cannot afford medical care may not be able to work. Because most states allow employers to fire because of absenteeism resulting from illness, the result is a loss of employment, exacerbating the financial problems that likely caused a lack of health insurance to begin with.

Long-Term Illness

• Untreated acute illnesses, like colds, can lead to long-term illnesses, like pneumonia. An acute illness can be quickly, and relatively inexpensively, treated. Long-term illness costs more to treat and leads to secondary problems, like loss of employment or even an inability to care for one's family.

Financial Crises, Including Bankruptcy

• When a person without medical insurance seeks treatment anyway, he may not be able to pay medical bills. While most hospitals have an indigent fund to help pay bills for the very poor, it's not uncommon for the "working poor" to make too much to qualify for this fund. High bills from treatment may lead to garnished wages, financial crises, and bankruptcy. In cases where the sick person has a chronic illness like cancer, an inability to pay one's medical bills may be a death sentence, as hospitals and doctors begin to refuse treatment.

Cost to Society

• Those lacking health insurance impact society in several different ways. Because hospitals are legally mandated to treat anyone who shows up in their emergency rooms, bills for indigent patients often go unpaid. Some of this is paid for with an indigent fund; however, the remainder is spread throughout the healthcare system and shared among other individuals and insurers. Sick, untreated people may spread disease, and their inability to work is often a business stressor when managers must find other ways to get jobs done. Finally, when a person who has spent much of her life uninsured reaches the age of 65, and is eligible for Medicare, her poorer health costs the government more to treat.