There’s the pressure in the chest, the pain radiating through arms and shoulders, the queasiness, sweating, shortness of breath. Warning signs of a heart attack should be hard to ignore. But that’s just what many people try to do if they have little or no health insurance, a new study finds…

In a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Chan, St. Luke’s heart specialist John Spertus and researchers at Yale New Haven Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and several other medical centers looked at data…researchers found that 48.6 percent of uninsured patients waited more than six hours after their symptoms started to get to a hospital. That compared with 39.3 percent of patients who were insured and did not have significant problems paying for care.

Kansas City Star, by Alan Bavley, 4/13/2010

Tags: Cardiology, Health Policy, heart attacks, no insurance