An estimated nine Indiana residents die every week from illnesses that turned fatal because their lack of health insurance limited their access to medical care, according to a new report.

In its report released Friday, the advocacy group Families USA estimates that 460 Hoosiers ages 25 to 64 died in 2006 due to lack of health insurance. From 2000 to 2006 about 3,100 working-age Hoosiers died because they didn't have health insurance, that report states.

The nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based group, which advocates for health care access, said people without health insurance are more likely to delay seeking care because of the high bills. That means diseases such as cancer are diagnosed at a later, more deadly stage.

"Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health care condemns a great number of Hoosiers to an early death," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

The group, which is doing state-by-state estimates of deaths attributable to a lack of insurance, said it is using the same methodology used by the Institute of Medicine and The Urban Institute.

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 Americans ages 25 to 64 died in 2000 because they didn't have health insurance, according to Families USA. For 2006, that number had jumped to 22,000, according to the Urban Institute.

Families USA estimated that in 2006, 13.7 percent of the roughly 3.5 million Hoosiers ages 25 to 64 lacked coverage. Based on that number, it estimated that the lack of insurance led to about 460 deaths that year.

Pollack said uninsured people are more likely to forgo checkups, screenings and other preventative care. As a result, diagnoses of cancer and other diseases come at an advanced stage, reducing the chance of survival.

"Health insurance really matters in how people make their health care decisions," he said.

Uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine.

For example, conditions such as pneumonia, which is typically very treatable and curable if caught early, can become much more complex and potentially fatal if treatment begins at later stages.

"If you don't have health insurance, you don't go for care until you're really sick," said Mary Haupert, president of Neighborhood Health Clinics Inc. in Fort Wayne.

She estimated that about 45,000 residents in Allen County alone are uninsured.

Without insurance, "you're more likely to die," Haupert said.

U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., said in a prepared release from Families USA, that the new report "reminds us that the lack of affordable health insurance has real consequences, often deadly, for the people of our country."