Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Seven Texans a day are dying because of a lack of health care insurance.

That's according to a study by Families USA that found Texas had more deaths from lack of treatment of the uninsured than any state except California.

In 2006, about 2,700 uninsured Texans of working age died because they didn't seek medical care, according to an analysis of Families USA and U.S. Census Bureau data. That means one in 1,200 of the uninsured between the ages of 25 and 64.

In California, one in 1,400 uninsured of working age died after not getting the care they needed.

Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack said the report "Dying for Coverage" did not suggest solutions to the problem, but the group has been vocal in calling for universal health care coverage in the U.S.

"The uninsured are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely between the ages of 25 and 64," Pollack said of the study results. "Sometimes the uninsured don't get what they need."

There are about 47 million uninsured people in the United States and 5.7 million in Texas. Of those, about 3.3 million uninsured Texans are of working age. How to cover the uninsured has been a major part of the presidential debates this election season, but few can agree on the best way to fix the crisis.

"It's truly a national crisis we have when it's a choice between housing and food or health care," said Dr. Bryan Alsip, assistant director of San Antonio's Metropolitan Health District. What's more, the working uninsured usually don't have access to integrated wellness programs found at companies that do provide insurance, he said.

"Universal coverage always has to be on the table," Alsip said, but other partial solutions include doing a better job of funding public health programs and maximizing federal dollars to provide better access to health care.

Although causes of death in the uninsured weren't measured in the Families USA study, Pollack said some of the reasons the uninsured die include not taking expensive drugs prescribed to treat chronic diseases or not seeking care for illness at all.

For example, he cited the case of an uninsured woman who received treatment for a heart attack through a hospital emergency room. The bills forced her into bankruptcy. When the next heart attack hit, she didn't go to the hospital and died.

Dr. Dan Stultz, CEO of the Texas Hospital Association, said he isn't surprised to see higher deaths among the uninsured since they lack a regular doctor, or a "medical home."

"People say, 'The uninsured have access to care because they can just go to the emergency room.' A) They don't; and B) if they do, they wait too late for what got 'em," Stultz said. "Without a medical home, duh, they die."

Stultz said prevention and education programs for Texas youth and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, will help cut down on premature adult deaths among the working poor in the future.

They are particularly susceptible to diabetes, which sometimes leads to the need for dialysis to treat kidney failure.

"If we don't do something about chunky fat kids, we're not going to have enough money to dialyze all of them," Stultz said.