Nearly nine Indiana residents die every week because they don't have health insurance, according to a report released Friday.

The study by Families USA said that in 2006 about 480,500 of the 3.5 million people living in Indiana between the ages of 25 and 64 lacked coverage and about 460 of them died because they didn't have health insurance.

Between 2000 and 2006, an estimated 3,100 Indiana adults died because they lacked health coverage, the report said.

Uninsured people are more likely to forgo checkups, screenings and other preventative care, Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack said.

As a result, diagnoses of cancer and other diseases come at an advanced stage, reducing the chance of survival, Pollack said.

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

Families USA, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit health care consumers group, said the report is based on a national study by the Institute of Medicine, which in 2002 forged a direct link between a lack of health coverage and deaths from health-related causes.

In its 2002 report, the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 adults nationwide died in 2000 because they did not have health insurance.

A 2006 update by the Urban Institute reported at least 22,000 U.S. adults died in 2006 because of a lack of health insurance, according to Families USA.

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