Percentage of uninsured Americans rising

April 26, 2006

In 1993, most Americans believed the national health-care system was at or near a crisis. With that in mind, I wonder what the right word would be to describe that same system in 2006 (thanks to Hark for the tip).

The percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked [tag]health insurance[/tag] for at least part of the year rose to 41 percent in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28 percent in 2001 without coverage, a study released on Wednesday found.

Moreover, more than half of the [tag]uninsured[/tag] adults said they were having problems paying their medical bills or had incurred debt to cover their expenses, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based private, health care policy foundation. The study of 4,350 adults also found that people without insurance were more likely to forgo recommended health screenings such as mammograms than those with coverage, and were less likely to have a regular doctor than their insured counterparts.

The report paints a bleak health care picture for the uninsured. “It represents an explosion of the insurance crisis into those with moderate incomes,” said Sara Collins, a senior program officer at the Commonwealth Fund. Collins said the study also illustrates how more employers are dropping coverage or are offering plans that are just too expensive for many people.

There’s not much in the way of good news in the report.

* Of those who earn less than $20,000 a year, the total without insurance in 53%, up from 49% when Bush took office.

* 59% of uninsured Americans with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes either skipped a dose of their [tag]medicine[/tag] or went without it because it was too expensive.

* Because they can’t afford preventative measures, those same Americans are more than twice as likely to visit an [tag]emergency[/tag] room, stay in a hospital overnight, or both, than their insured counterparts.

Also released this week is a new government-funded report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which found that cost prevented 41.1 percent of uninsured adults from seeing a doctor, while 51% of women without health insurance haven’t had a mammogram in two years and 76.3% of uninsured men between the ages of 40 to 64 haven’t had the PSA test, which detects prostate cancer, in two years.

At some point, the drive for a single-payer system is inevitable, right?

“At some point, the drive for a single-payer system is inevitable, right?”

One would hope so, but all power in this country seems to rest in the hands of those with a medieval punitive mindset which holds that any person’s economic difficulty is a sign of his or her moral failing. I’ve given up hope.

  • I dunno. The single-payer system has lots of reason and data behind it, plus all other modern nations have it. Those two points alone – not to mention the phrase “socialized medicine” – seem to make it repugnant to the increasingly obese American electorate. No matter how many of us die in the streets in this presumptively “Christian” nation, I doubt we’ll ever adopt it (even if the Dems should manage to regain power).

    BTW, 999 days till Bush-Cheney’s term ends.

  • The current healthcare finance system is slowly collapsing, as is the Bush administration. By 2009 Bush will be out, and his party will (hopefully) be quite discredited. Also by that point the numbers CB cites will be worse as well. That’s when there’ll be a window to address all this, assuming we haven’t had the second coming of Hillary and another gawdawful public-private, neither-fish-nor-fowl half-measure approach to all this.

    Single payer needs to be the non-negotiable final goal. Any reforms or other measures taken need to be steps on the road to single payer. No compromises this time.

  • As long as the American people remain so utterly
    apathetic about every atrocity committed by this
    administration, nothing will be done. I don’t have
    much hope that the Democrats will win in 2006 or
    2008, either. The American people don’t like
    the Bush administration’s policies, but they’re
    not about to get up off their fat asses and do
    anything about it.

    And we all know that Congress isn’t going to
    serve anyone but the wealthy and the corporate
    crowd.

  • This is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. I do hope that eventually this country will adopt universal healthcare. Why ‘socialized medicine’ is such a bad thing, I’ll never figure out. The argument that I hear most often from opponents are that the cost of healthcare spending will be brought up by people will be going to the doctor for frivalous reasons (one person put it as every time they get a hangnail). This is simply not true. The uninsured are forced to wait until their illness is bad enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room, where the treatment becomes much more involved and expensive. Preventative medicine is much less expensive than treating people in a crisis situation.

    On a side note, now that I have a job that offers both medical and dental insurance, I’m currently in the process of getting teeth fixed. After 28 years of no insurance, the process has been expensive.

  • Isn’t this the compassionate conservative no-payer health plan in action? Except that we all pay of course. All reports continue to show Americans paying more per capita for health care than any other industrialized nation (almost double) and getting horrible health care (almost the worst).

    McLauglin’s show was pretty interesting. Even the industry insiders aknowledged that switching to a single payer plan would immediately provide enough savings to cover all the uninsured.

  • Tangential thought, but how much incentive is there for your current health plan to shell out $$ for prevention and early detection when they know, statistically, most people won’t be with the same employer (and therefore likely not on the same health plan) within 3-5 years (or even sooner depending on how long you’ve been on the plan)?

  • Its ironic that this week the UK celebrates 60 years of full national healthcare for all.

    There’s a letter in today’s London Times from the heads of about a dozen major healthcare associations and groups, including the British Medical Association, celebrating that fact. Here’s a snippet:

    “The continued commitment of funding through tax ensures equity for patients but also makes economic sense because it is the cheapest way of collecting money. If a system is unaffordable through tax it is not affordable through any other funding system. International experience shows there is no necessary link between how systems perform and how they are funded. Any move to a health insurance system to charge patients for their care would increase bureaucracy and would leave those who need the most care with the greatest financial burden. ”

    I’ve more here.

    Regards, Cernig @ Newshog

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