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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a commission this week that will try to determine the effects of socioeconomic factors, like income, education, housing, diet, exercise and stress, on the health care and life spans of U.S. residents.

This comes in light of releases from the American Cancer Society that found that lower-income Americans who can't afford insurance are more likely to be diagnosed with a late stage cancer than those who can afford it.

And similar stories abound these days - the infant mortality rate is much higher for black citizens in Florida, non-white women are more likely to suffer from aggressive breast cancer but less likely to get treatment, the health care concerns go on and on.

According to Kaiser Daily Health, about one in three lower-income residents has a chronic disease, compared with about one in 10 higher-income residents. All of which points to the fact that those who enjoy good health care enjoy longer life spans.

This is why it's so important to have an insurance policy that covers yearly checkups alongside everything else. Those checkups are the key to preventing disease, or catching it early on when treatment is both cheaper, and more successful.