From Think Progress we learn some more about what repealing the Affordable Care Act would cost us:
– 32 million Americans will lose coverage compared to current law: “Under H.R. 2, about 32 million fewer nonelderly people would have health insurance in 2019, leaving a total of about 54 million nonelderly people uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, compared with a projected share of 94 percent under current law (and 83 percent currently).” (p. 8-9)
– Increases deficit by $230 billion over 10 years: “Consequently, over the 2012–2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes to CBO’s and JCT’s projections for that period.” (p. 5)
– Huge deficit increases over next decade: “Correspondingly, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2 would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger.” (p. 7)
– Individuals would pay more for health insurance: “Although premiums in the individual market would be lower, on average, under H.R. 2 than under current law, many people would end up paying more for health insurance— because under current law, the majority of enrollees purchasing coverage in that market would receive subsidies via the insurance exchanges, and H.R. 2 would eliminate those subsidies.” (p. 9-10)
– Average health care benefits would be worse: “In particular, if H.R. 2 was enacted… the average insurance policy in this market would cover a smaller share of enrollees’ costs for health care and a slightly narrower range of benefits.” (p.9)
– Premiums for employer-sponsored insurance would increase: “Premiums for employment-based coverage obtained through large employers would be slightly higher under H.R. 2 than under current law, reflecting the net impact of many relatively small changes.” (p. 10)
As the health care debate on Capitol Hill reaches its peak, many of the strongest opponents of an overhaul represent districts with the largest percentage of people who don't have health insurance, an NPR analysis shows.
Of the 100 congressional districts with the highest percentage rates of uninsured people, 53 are represented either by Republican lawmakers who are fighting the overhaul, or by conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have slowed down and diluted the overhaul proposals.
One leader of the Blue Dog effort is Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, the coalition's chief health care negotiator. His 4th Congressional District covers southern Arkansas, a rural area with a high poverty rate. In his district, more than one out of five residents under age 65 lacks health insurance. That's 30 percent higher than the national average. "Many of those individuals who would need a public health care option are those who are not likely to be able to take two hours out of their day to go to a public event like that town hall," says Kevin Motl, a history professor at Ouachita Baptist University who attended the meeting. "They were too busy earning hourly wages and trying to keep roofs above their children's heads. Those voices are not going to be present in that discourse." New data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that 17 percent of Americans under age 65 now go without health insurance. It's a basic truth of political analysis that low-income residents — that is, those most likely to be uninsured — are less likely than middle-class people to attend town meetings and less likely to vote. To state the obvious, the poor are also less likely to make campaign contributions. Read it all or listen at NPR
Lack of health insurance now more lethal
One American now dies every 12 minutes from lack of health insurance.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 17, 2009 Contacts: Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. David Himmelstein, M.D. Andrew P. Wilper, M.D., M.P.H. Mark Almberg, Physicians for a National Health Program, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org David Lerner or Karmen Ross, Riptide Communications, (212) 260-5000 A study published online today estimates nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. The new study, "Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults," appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993. Lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper, who worked at Harvard Medical School when the study was done and who now teaches at the University of Washington Medical School, said, "The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health. We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications." The study, which analyzed data from national surveys carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), assessed death rates after taking education, income and many other factors including smoking, drinking and obesity into account. It estimated that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually. Previous estimates from the IOM and others had put that figure near 18,000. The methods used in the current study were similar to those employed by the IOM in 2002, which in turn were based on a pioneering 1993 study of health insurance and mortality. Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease.An increase in the number of uninsured and an eroding medical safety net for the disadvantaged likely explain the substantial increase in the number of deaths associated with lack of insurance. The uninsured are more likely to go without needed care. Another factor contributing to the widening gap in the risk of death between those who have insurance and those who don’t is the improved quality of care for those who can get it. The research, carried out at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, analyzed U.S. adults under age 65 who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) between 1986 and 1994. Respondents first answered detailed questions about their socioeconomic status and health and were then examined by physicians. The CDC tracked study participants to see who died by 2000. The study found a 40 percent increased risk of death among the uninsured. As expected, death rates were also higher for males (37 percent increase), current or former smokers (102 percent and 42 percent increases), people who said that their health was fair or poor (126 percent increase), and those that examining physicians said were in fair or poor health (222 percent increase). Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, study co-author, professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Mass., noted: "Historically, every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of nonprofit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 pay with their lives." She added: "Even the most liberal version of the House bill would have left 17 million uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The whittled down Senate bill will be worse — leaving tens of millions uninsured, and tens of thousands dying because of lack of care. Without the administrative savings only attainable through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer reform — real universal coverage will remain unaffordable. Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives." Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, remarked, "The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance. Even this grim figure is an underestimate — now one dies every 12 minutes." "Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults," Andrew P. Wilper, M.D., M.P.H., Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Karen E. Lasser, M.D., M.P.H., Danny McCormick, M.D., M.P.H., David H. Bor, M.D., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D. American Journal of Public Health, Sept. 17, 2009 (online); print edition Vol. 99, Issue 12, December 2009. A copy of the study, along with a state-by-state breakout of excess deaths from lack of insurance, is available at http://www.pnhp.org/excessdeathsPhysicians for a National Health Program ( www.pnhp.org) is a research and educational organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance. To speak with a physician/spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions or call (312) 782-6006. Source: Physicians for a National Health ProgramA full text copy of the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health is here (PDF). A state-by-state breakout of excess deaths from lack of insurance, is available here (PDF)
More From Dr. Steve:There are 11 million Americans with chronic physical illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and asthma are not getting the medical care they need because they don’t have health insurance. The uninsured have higher rates of stroke and cardiovascular disease deaths. The American Cancer Society found that uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as those with private coverage.
Overall, the United States has the highest rate of so-called "amenable" mortality among 19 OECD countries; that's 101,000 fewer deaths per year if we were as good as the average of the top three. But forget studies and just think for a moment. It matters if you got the mammogram last year, or get "treated" in the ER for untreatable metastatic breast cancer today. It matters if you if get your lipids checked and started on statins five years ago because you have coverage, or get "treated" in the ER for your fatal heart attack today. Let me be a little bit more clear. This attitude by right wing Republican idealogues is not just delusional, it is homicidal. They are justifying the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. That is the equivalent of seven 9/11's per year, year-in and year-out.
Hospitals are getting killed financially in part because of the dumping of care into emergency rooms. They are closing ERs all over the country because of this. Meanwhile wait times in the ER are up even for the critically ill. This is not new news. Everyone who knows anything about health care in the country knows this.
And let's not forget that half of personal bankruptcies are linked to health care costs (admittedly the studies on this predate the mortgage crisis; though of course right-wing free-market fundamentalist privatization and deregulation led to that disaster too). Of course that includes lots of people "with" health insurance from the same private for-profit health insurance companies
The Census Bureau released health insurance numbers for 2008 today. On the surface it appears that things haven't gotten much worse, and that for children they've gotten better. On the surface.
You really need to dig a little deeper than what's presented to get the whole picture and understand that, in addition to all the personal insurance horror stories out there, there is also the national horror story of how millions of people in our country, more than the entire population of Canada, lack health coverage.
If you look at the insurance rate changes by age group, you quickly see that the picture is not at all rosy. Children's insurance did indeed improve -- about 800,000 fewer uninsured children and a drop of 1.1 points in percentage uninsured from 2007 to 2008. Great! (And you can give grudging thanks to the terrible horrible no-good very bad gov'mint bureaucrat-ruled Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program). (But note -- 7.3 million children under 18 -- 8.1 million if you include the 18-year-olds, lack coverage and that's considered a major improvement!).
Elderly rates also improved marginally -- but they were very good to begin with (due to that other awful government-run scary socialist Obama-like Medicare program). 1.7% of the elderly were uninsured in 2008 as compared to 1.9% in 2007 (not a statistically significant difference).
For all other age groups, that is all groups within the category "non-elderly adults," things got worse. Over all, for people aged 18 through 64, the percentage uninsured went from 19.6 (pretty bad already) to 20.3%. And the number of uninsured non-elderly adults increased by 1.5 million. Just think, more than one out of every 5 people between the ages of 18 and 64 was uninsured in 2008.
Now isn't that interesting -- the two age groups with a "public option" (limited for children to the lower income children who are eligible for either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program) had stable or improved coverage, while the group reliant on employer & private coverage fared badly. Gee, do you think that could possibly mean that government-run programs might actually work?
So the improvement in children's coverage masks how bad things are for the non-elderly adults -- people like the woman I just talked to on the phone who said "I'm in that funny age group, no longer working at a salaried job with benefits and too young for Medicare. My insurance premiums have just doubled and I don't know if I can keep affording to pay for health insurance."
What we really have is a steadily worsening health coverage picture for the adult population. That picture is different for the young and old only because of much maligned public safety-net programs (and for children, this is a very limited safety net). From where I stand, a "robust public option" looks pretty damn good! Read it all here.
Some of the most vociferous opposition to the proposals before the House and Senate comes from residents of rural states that could benefit most if the present system is revamped.
"The states that tend to be more conservative have a higher rate of people who are uninsured," said Ron Pollack, executive director of FamiliesUSA, which backs a healthcare overhaul. "As a result, healthcare reform is going to provide a disproportionate amount of resources to those states." Read it all at latimes.com
"In America, we strictly ration health care. We've done it for years," says Dr. Arthur Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine and associate dean for health policy at Emory University School of Medicine. "But in contrast to other wealthy countries, we don't ration medical care on the basis of need or anticipated benefit. In this country, we mainly ration on the ability to pay. And that is especially evident when you examine the plight of the uninsured in the United States." Kellermann still remembers the young mother of two who came into his emergency room more than 15 years ago, suffering from a hemorrhagic stroke.
"We worked for 90 minutes to save her life, but basically she had burst a blood vessel in her head. She didn't have a chance," he says. "She had no health insurance, and when the money got tight, she had to make a choice — she could either buy the groceries for her kids, or she was going to buy the three blood pressure medicines she had to take every day."
Sadly, Kellermann says, for less than the cost of that futile, 90-minute effort in the ER, the woman could have had all the blood pressure medication she needed for the rest of her life. It was not a government bureaucrat who decided she should forgo treatment until it was too late — it was her own lack of health insurance that led her to make that choice. It's not only the uninsured who are affected. Americans who do have health insurance tend to get a lot of procedures after they're sick — not because bureaucrats dictate that, but because that's what insurance and Medicare pay for. Rationing is not limited to the health care industry. No other country devotes as much of its economy to health care as the United States. While Americans might not think of that as a choice, it means they have less to spend on everything else. Government payments for health care come at the expense of schools, roads and other services. The extra money that employers have to pay for rising health insurance premiums is money they cannot put into workers' paychecks.
"No worker gets to say, 'You know what, make my premium $1,000 lower by getting me a more efficient health insurance package, and at the same time, give me $1,000 more in take-home pay,' " says Harvard economist Katherine Baicker, who has studied the impact of rising health care costs on employee compensation.
So while there is no government rationing board handing out coupon books for heart surgeries, more and more of the nation's resources are being gobbled up by health care, often with little choice for individuals, and often in ways that no sensible person would choose. Read it all at NPR
According to a report out this week, the average total waiting time in a U.S. emergency room in 2008 was four hours and three minutes, a 27-minute increase in nationwide average wait times since 2002. The recession is one chief reason for the increase, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. In a survey in January of more than 1,700 emergency doctors, 66 percent said they'd seen an increase in the number of patients in their emergency rooms over the preceding six months. Most of the physicians -- 83 percent -- reported seeing patients who'd lost their jobs and health insurance and delayed medical care.
"Some of these people come to the ER because they've been turned away by their primary care physician, because they've lost their insurance," said Dr. Angela Gardner, incoming president of the physicians group. "Sometimes they've delayed care because they have no insurance and end up with a much more serious condition."
Gardner, who works in the ER at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, said these newly uninsured people are taxing an overburdened system. Read More at CNN.com
At a glance, the plight of these 47 million appears to be much if not most of what needs fixing. But, as Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy observes in his column this past Sunday (“Insured but not covered”), things are far from copacetic for those millions of Americans supposedly adequately covered by health plans through their employers.
They are not. As Steffy puts it, this umbrella leaks, and thousands of families are going under financially because their health insurance does not perform as advertised. Steffy cites a study in the American Journal of Medicine showing that two-thirds of all bankruptcies over the past six years were related to medical expenses, and that a surprising three-fourths of those filing for bankruptcy for medical-related reasons had medical insurance when they did so.
Or perhaps this is not so surprising. Certainly it will not astonish anyone who has attempted to navigate the maze of co-pays, deductibles, explanations of benefits and frequently inscrutable bills from hospitals, laboratories and other care providers. For the unwary and uninformed health-care consumer, these can all be a source of emotional and financial stress on top of whatever medical condition may afflict them or a family member.
Harvard Professor David Himmelstein , author of the study mentioned above, doesn’t mince words. “Private health insurance is a defective product, he says, “akin to an umbrella that melts in the rain .”
The notion of competition in the health-care insurance industry is mostly myth, Himmelstein contends. For most consumers, the choices are limited by what their employers offer and at what cost they choose to offer it. For some lucky ones the choices may be made broader by the option of insuring through a spouse. Read more at the Houston Chronicle
The number of Americans without health insurance is growing at an unprecedented rate. The most recent measured data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that there were 46 million Americans without health insurance in 2007. But new research released by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine stated that in January 2009 there were an estimated 52 million uninsured in the United States.[1]
The map below shows the percentage increase in the uninsured in every state since 2007—the last time the government made an official estimate through the census. Clicking on a state will show the current number and percentage of people without health insurance.
Interactive Map and More Info Here.
Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare for the elderly and disabled and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the population with no coverage.
The researchers and some consumer advocates said the study showed the proposals under the most serious consideration are unlikely to help many Americans. They are pressing for a so-called single payer plan, in which one agency, usually the government, coordinates health coverage.
"Expanding private insurance and calling it health reform will fail to prevent financial catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Americans every year," Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen said in a statement.
"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the report reads.
"Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy."
The researchers studied 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy between January and April in 2007, before the current recession began.
Read more at Yahoo! News
"U.S. families with health insurance are paying an estimated $1,017 more in annual premiums to compensate providers for healthcare to the uninsured, a report released on Thursday said." Read More....:
For most of the last century, no single group was a bigger obstacle to universal health care than organized medicine. Today, perhaps no single group stands more united in support of some form of universal coverage. Now, surveys reveal that overwhelming numbers of physicians resent the current crazy patchwork health care system, which fixes their reimbursements, regulates and too often denies patient care, and piles physicians with paperwork so unending and from so many directions that the average doctor has little time left over to challenge the status quo.
Add to all this the frustration arising from working for no pay to coordinate care and provide care after hours, from struggling with the cost of health care insurance for their own employees, and from seeing their uninsured and underinsured patients go without recommended care, and what emerges is widespread physician support of radical reform.
More than four-fifths of physicians now agree that our health care system either needs fundamental changes or should be rebuilt completely Read More...
Abstract
This report uses the Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM) to quantify the intermediate and longer-term implications if America’s health care system is not significantly overhauled. Under a range of economic scenarios, the analysis shows an increasing strain on business owners and their employees over the next decade if reform is not enacted. There would be a dramatic decline in the number of people insured through employers, and millions more could become uninsured. There would be large growth in Medicaid/CHIP enrollment and spending, and increased spending on uncompensated health care. Middle-income working families would be the most affected.
Read More...:
by Richard Kirsch and Rep. Jan Schakowsky
Fifteen years ago the private health insurance industry told Congress and the nation that it could fix the health care mess if government got out of the way. The insurers said that they would control costs for American families and businesses and improve the quality of care. The American people, American business and the Congress aren't about to buy that line again.
The result of leaving health care reform to the insurance industry is that health insurance premiums have gone up six times faster than wages in the past nine years. Those dollars are buying skimpier health coverage with high deductibles and caps on benefits, resulting in more and more insured people being forced into medical bankruptcy. Businesses that are struggling to meet health care costs in a global economy and dropping coverage, so much so that now 1 out of 3Americans under the age of 65 has been uninsured at some time in the past two years. Health care eats up 16% of our economy, up from 11% when the nation decided to leave the private insurance in charge.
The insurance industry and their defenders on the ideological right are resorting to the same name tired name calling that worked for them the past, "government-run" health care. It's a desperate attempt to fend off a sensible government role in making health care affordable to our families, businesses and nation. This time it won't work. The President and leadership in Congress -- and the American -- people support a two-pronged role for government. One, set rules so that the private insurance industry can't continue to put profits before our health. Two, offer a choice of private insurance or a public health insurance plan, so people aren't stuck only with private insurance.
The fact is that if private insurers controlled health care inflation as well as Medicare has over the past decade, businesses and families would see much lower premiums than they do today. Between 1997 and 2006, per enrollee spending in private insurance grew 59% faster than spending in Medicare. And Medicare has the tougher job, because it cares for the most expensive population: the elderly and those with serious disabilities.
One reason that private insurers have gotten away with skyrocketing premium increases is that they have a near monopoly across the nation. According to data from the American Medical Association, in virtually every metropolitan area in the country (96%) the insurance market is dominated by so few insurers so as to be considered "highly-concentrated." A public health insurance option coupled with a regulated private insurance market will break the stranglehold a handful of companies have on the insurance market. Most importantly, under these reforms consumers will be able to vote with their feet when their health care plan -- public or private -- doesn't work for them.
In fact, the main argument that the industry and the right has with offering the choice of a public health insurance option is that too many Americans will choose it. If private insurers are really more efficient than government, they shouldn't have any trouble competing with a public health insurance plan. It's the height of irony that the defenders of free markets are opposed to competition. But when it comes to health care, which is a public good, public insurers really are more efficient.
There is broad agreement that America's health care system does not deliver the value we need. Today, private insurers have little incentive to develop sophisticated disease management programs, since such programs may attract sicker patients into their plan. And when care improvements are achieved, private plans have no incentive to share best practices with industry competitors. A new public health insurance plan would create a mechanism for the development of innovative and transparent payment mechanisms, the expansion of quality incentives, and the adoption of evidence-based protocols. As the Veterans Health Administration and Medicare have proven capable of doing, a new public health insurance program could lead the way in advancing electronic medical records, creating incentives for greater integration of delivery systems, and establishing improved measures of quality.
The American public gets it. In a national survey of voters taken last year, four-out-of-five voters (79%) said that the insurance industry puts profits before people. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this week found that two-thirds (67%) of U.S. residents "strongly" or "somewhat" favor establishing a public health insurance option "similar to Medicare."
Polling by Lake Research Partners this January found that the public believes that the choice of a public health insurance option will lower costs, improve quality, and increase competition. The poll paired the strongest conservative attacks -- "rationing", "government bureaucracy", losing private health insurance and being dumped into a public plan -- against the arguments for the choice of a public health insurance plan. In every case the public favors the pro-public health insurance option, in most cases by margins of better than two-to-one. For example, 61% agree that a public health insurance plan will be better able to control costs by using its purchasing power to drive competition. Voters reject by wide margins claims that a public health insurance plan will limit access, with 66% of voters agreeing that a public health insurance plan will provide an affordable option with a wide choice of doctors.
The question before Congress is whether it will follow the will of the American people. Or, instead, bow to the private insurance industry and other interests that stand to lose if reforms are passed to really make health care more affordable. The President and Congressional leadership share a strong commitment to reforms that will guarantee good, affordable coverage for all, with a choice of private or public health insurance. We know opponents will use scare tactics across the country and a huge corporate lobbying presence inside the Beltway to block reform. Progressive leaders in Congress and Health Care for America Now will be working hard to keep the American public engaged in this fight over the next months. Our success will be the hallmark of a new era in American politics in which the public good is put ahead of corporate excess and greed.
Google Book Search:
By Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance"
 Hidden Cost, Value Lost, the fifth of a series of six books on the consequences of uninsurance in the United States, illustrates some of the economic and social losses to the country when maintaining so many people without health insurance. The book explores the potential economic and societal benefits that could be realized if everyone had health insurance on a continuous basis, as people over age 65 currently do with Medicare. 'Hidden Costs, Value Lost concludes that the estimated benefits across society gained by providing the uninsured with the kind and amount of health services that the insured use, are likely greater than the additional social costs of doing so. The potential economic value to be gained in better health outcomes from uninterrupted coverage for all Americans is estimated to be between $65 and $130 billion each year.
yahoo.com
If the uninsured were a political lobbying group, they'd have more members than AARP. The National Mall couldn't hold them if they decided to march on Washington.
But going without health insurance is still seen as a personal issue, a misfortune for many and a choice for some. People who lose coverage often struggle alone instead of turning their frustration into political action. Lawmakers already face tough choices to come up with the hundreds of billions it would cost to guarantee coverage for all. The lack of a vocal constituency won't help. Congress might decide to cover the uninsured slowly, in stages.
The uninsured "do not provide political benefit for the aid you give them," said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health. "That's one of the dilemmas in getting all this money. If I'm in Congress, and I help out farmers, they'll help me out politically. But if I help out the uninsured, they are not likely to help members of Congress get re-elected."
The number of uninsured has grown to an estimated 50 million people because of the recession. Even so, advocates in the halls of Congress are rarely the uninsured themselves. The most visible are groups that represent people who have insurance, usually union members and older people. In the last election, only 10 percent of registered voters said they were uninsured.
The grass-roots group Health Care for America Now plans to bring as many as 15,000 people to Washington this year to lobby Congress for guaranteed coverage. Campaign director Richard Kirsch expects most to have health insurance.
"We would never want to organize the uninsured by themselves because Americans see the problem as affordability, and that is the key thing," he said.
Besides, added Kirsch, the uninsured are too busy scrambling to make ends meet. Many are self-employed; others are holding two or three part-time jobs. "They may not have a lot of time to be activists," he said. Indeed, the Institute of Medicine, which provides scientific advice to the government, has found that a lack of health insurance increases the chances of bad outcomes for people with a range of common ailments, from diabetes and high blood pressure to cancer and stroke. Uninsured patients don't get needed follow-up care, skip taking prescription medicines and put off seeking help when they develop new symptoms.
Such evidence strengthens the case for getting everybody covered right away, Schoen said. But she acknowledges the politics may get tough. "It certainly has been a concern out of our history that unorganized voices aren't heard," she said.
Sacramento Business Journal:: About 3.7 million working-age adults have already lost insurance due to the recession and 500,000 more will become uninsured over the next four years if there are no changes in health policy — even if the economy recovers, according to a new report by researchers at University of California Berkeley.
Growing numbers of uninsured will mean higher costs for financially strapped cities and states, decreased productivity and earnings, and higher costs for employers and individuals who do have coverage, concludes Ken Jacobs, primary author and chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
About 500,000 working-age Californians have lost insurance since the recession began a little over a year ago, for a total of about 6 million uninsured. An additional 100,000 will lose insurance by the end of 2012 without health care reform, even if the economy bounces back to pre-recession levels, he said.
Total numbers will be higher because the estimates do not include children or the elderly. The report uses data from the March supplement for the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau.
Released as Congress debates health-care reform initiatives in President Obama’s proposed federal budget, the report documents what could happen if significant policy changes fail.
If the auto industry or other significant segments of the U.S. economy go down, the landscape will be much worse, Jacobs said.
60 Minutes - CBS News: "The economic crisis is hurting society's most vulnerable. For some people these days - especially cancer patients - losing a job and health insurance could mean losing life-saving care as cash-strapped public hospitals are forced to cut critical charity care.
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley reports from Las Vegas, where cancer sufferers were recently told the county hospital would no longer provide outpatient cancer treatments, leaving uninsured patients searching for help." "I don't want to die. I shouldn't have to die. This is a county hospital. This is for people that, like me, many people have lost their insurance, have not any other resources. I mean I was a responsible person. I bought my house. I put money away. I raised my two children. And now I have nothing. You know my house isn’t worth anything. I have no money. And I said 'What do I do, but what do all these other people do after me?' 'And they said we don't know,'"
Only about one-half of all young adults who are working are offered coverage through an employer, compared to about 75 percent of adults who are offered coverage through an employer, over age 30, said Sara Collins with the nonpartisan health care group, Commonwealth Fund.
And it s a common problem. According to the latest date from the Census Bureau, in 2007, there were an estimated 13.2 million uninsured young adults. It s the fastest growing group of the 46 million uninsured Americans today. Other uninsured rates, according to the data:
- Children under 19: 11 percent
- Ages 30-35: 23 percent
- Ages 36-49: 17 percent
- Ages 50-64: 13 percent
"As the recession puts a bigger strain on consumers' wallets, many underinsured Americans either can't or won't pay the high deductibles and co-pays for treatment they receive in hospitals and emergency rooms.
By one estimate, 25 million Americans can't afford to cover the gap between what their insurance covers and their medical bills demand."
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