Harvard Medical School Researchers found in an analysis that one person dies every 12 minutes every year due to lack of health insurance and absence of good care. In other words 45,000 American citizens die every year.

In an interview with the Reuters, Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said "We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined".

The researchers said that Americans who have coverage are more likely to live longer than those who are aged 64 and younger without any health insurance. They have a 40 percent higher chance of dying.

President Barack Obama's plan of prioritizing this as top domestic policy has been slowed by critics and intense political battles in Congress. The insurance and healthcare industries too are fighting some pats of the plan.

A study done in 1993 had similar results and showed that people without insurance have a 25 percent greater risk of death. 18,000 people died in a year who lacked coverage as shown by the Institute of Medicine in 2002.

The increased number of the people who are at risk of death due to lack of healthcare insurance is due to the growing numbers of the uninsured people. Some critics say that the study is flawed.

The lack of places where the uninsured can get healthcare from is another reason for the increased risk of death for them.

Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said that the uninsured are at a high risk of death even from complications arising from preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.