The number of Americans with no health insurance rose by 2.4 million last year to 43.6 million, or more than 15 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Health experts say one of the biggest consequences of having so many uninsured Americans is that most do not get preventive care and end up with conditions that can be life-threatening and expensive to treat.
"I would have continued with my treatments," Sheila Wessenberg says.
Now the cancer has spread to her lungs. Wessenberg will get radiation treatment with help from a charity, but she says the process is taking a long time. "If we had insurance now, ... I'd already be radiated," says Wessenberg.
Meanwhile, the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York is one of the nations biggest and busiest. Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, the hospital's director, says fully half the patients would not be there if they had health insurance.
"Insurance would mean someone prevents a disorder. The lack of insurance creates a catastrophic event. It turns diabetes that can be well-controlled into diabetes that's untreatable, or an infection that's modest into something catastrophic," says Goldfrank.
The shortage of health insurance also cost lives. The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 people a year die in the United States from conditions that would have been prevented if they had adequate health insurance.
The crisis is not only felt in the lives of individuals -- the nation as a whole pays a steep bill. Between $65 billion and $130 billion a year is paid in additional health costs because treatment is so often delayed.
"That's just a total failure of a societal commitment to human beings that could easily be corrected by a simple system of giving people health care," says Goldfrank.
Robert Bazell is NBC News' chief medical correspondent.
