WASHINGTON - One working-age Wyomingite dies each week due to a lack of health insurance, a new report says.

"A lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for health care consumers.

Building on previous studies, Families USA estimated how many people will meet an early death because they don't have the same access to health care as those with insurance.

In 2006, there were nearly 274,000 people in Wyoming between the ages of 25 and 64. Of those, 18.5 percent were uninsured, the report said, citing U.S. Census Bureau data.

The report estimated that about 50 working-age Wyomingites died in 2006 because of a lack of health insurance. That figure rose to nearly 300 between 2000 and 2006.

Uninsured people are less likely to have a usual source of care outside the emergency room, often go without screenings and preventive care, often delay or forgo needed care and are sicker and die earlier than those who have insurance, the report said.

The deaths sometimes occurred because those with chronic health problems but no insurance couldn't afford to fill their prescriptions, Pollack said, or because people who felt the onset of a pain or disease couldn't afford diagnostic tests and so the disease progressed to an advanced stage.

The report built on a 2002 report by the Institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, estimating that 18,000 adults nationwide died in 2000 because they lacked health insurance. It also followed an Urban Institute report that at least 22,000 adults died in 2006 because they had no health insurance.

Those reports estimated that uninsured people ages 25 to 64 faced a 25 percent greater risk of dying, as previous analyses have shown.

The report did not recommend a specific solution, but Pollack called for increased attention and leadership at the national level, especially once the next president takes office.

Families USA does not advocate a single-payer system, he said. The group believes that public programs like Medicaid and SCHIP must be strengthened but that solutions must include the private sector, perhaps with refundable tax credits or help for small businesses, he said.

The lack of health insurance also affects those who are insured, because the cost of health insurance premiums rises to pay for uncompensated care for the uninsured, he said.