The Larry King Cardiac Foundation

Helping the Underserved

The Foundation serves economically disadvantaged men, women and children. It offers services that are often beyond the reach of minority and low-income populations populations that have a disproportionate burden of death and disability from cardiovascular disease.

In the 21 years since Larry King underwent successful quintuple bypass surgery, there has been a steady increase in the number of uninsured families in the United States. From the years 2001 to 2005, the uninsured population rose from 41.2 million to 46.6 million an increase equal to the population of Los Angeles and Philadelphia combined. The overall percentage of Americans without health insurance grew from 14.9% in 2001 to 15.9% in 2005. ¹

While healthcare costs have escalated, job-based healthcare coverage has declined. Many small employers can no longer afford to offer health benefits, while companies that do offer insurance often require employees to contribute a larger share to their coverage. Thus, many working Americans must opt out of employer-based health insurance because they cannot afford it. Indeed, nearly one million full-time workers lost their health insurance in 2005. ² A full eight in ten uninsured individuals came from working families. ³

When Larry King recovered from his surgery in 1987, 70% of Americans had employment-based health insurance. By 2005, that number had dropped to 59%. ⁴

As the number of working Americans without health insurance has steadily ticked upward, another dangerous trend has followed suit. Cardiovascular disease has become the nation’s number one killer, accounting for 36% of all deaths in the United States. 79.4 million men, women, and children over one-fourth of the country’s population live with some form of heart disease. ⁵

In 2007, an estimated 1.2 million Americans had a new or recurrent coronary attack. ⁶
And those without insurance will be faced with medical bills in the thousands or will depend on hospitals to absorb the cost of treatment as debt or charity care.

The Larry King Cardiac Foundation was established to address the need born from the convergence of these two healthcare challenges. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 13% of non-elderly adults in the U.S. who report having heart disease are currently uninsured. This means that 1.7 million adults with heart disease have no health insurance. The average bypass procedure costs $21,000 ⁷, while an angioplasty can reach $40,000 ⁸. In 2004, the median household income was $44,334 ⁹. The cost of a heart procedure is simply beyond the reach for too many American families.