Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear jillford64,

These are the numbers bandied about by the Census Bureau:

The number of people with health
insurance coverage increased by
2.0 million in 2004, to 245.3 mil-
lion (84.3 percent of the
population).
� In 2004, 45.8 million people were
without health insurance coverage,
up from 45.0 million people in
2003.
� There was no change in the per-
centage of people without health
insurance coverage (15.7 percent)
between 2003 and 2004.
� The historical record is marked by
a 12-year period from 1987 to
1998 when the uninsured rate
(12.9 percent in 1987) either
increased or was unchanged from
one year to the next (Figure 5).

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf

Oh, better make that 45,800,001; nobody counted me.
And you have to qonder how many of the homeless, how many of those living in "projects" in the inner cities, most of whom seem unlikely to have health insurance, didn't get counted as well.

Finally, there's this:

"Some researchers suggest the number of citizens or legal immigrants without access to any kind of health care insurance is closer to 20 million."

I wonder if you would mind citing your sources for that. Thanks.
Regards,
John

[ReeseDog]

[taikibansei]

[chinagirl]

reesedog,

Not everyone with a full-time job is provided health insurance. Not all health insurance provided to full-time workers is affordable. Look into insurance costs for lower and middle-income working families and think about why some people might choose to be under or uninsured.

[15yearsinQ8]

a total coverage national health insurance will not work

fixing global warming is an easier fix than getting a no-wait, no-cost utopia free.
it was always a pipe dream
obama's elected, OK? now forget about it....
unless you nationalize the oil in the usa increase the income and business tax and have a natioanl sales tax
maybe that's obama's REAL plan......

[taikibansei]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[quote="ReeseDog"]

[Chancellor]

[Chancellor]

[johnslat]

Dear jillford64,

"But those 20 million can get at least basic health care at the local emergency room because public hospitals are not allowed to turn anyone away."

Well, not quite:

"Some Houston emergency rooms, including those in its trauma centers, are �on diversion� more than 30 percent of the time; in other words, they are temporarily at capacity and will accept no additional patients, regardless of their medical condition or ability to pay. A survey of hospital emergency departments in Harris and surrounding counties found that emergency rooms were forced to divert ambulances 77 percent more often in 2001 than in the previous year. Furthermore, 59 percent of emergency departments reported that seriously injured patients were at risk due to delays in transfers to higher level-of-care hospitals.[
Such diversions and transfers can have deadly consequences. A 2002 Harris County report documented the death of several individuals due to emergency room diversions.[44] The head of Save Our Emergency Rooms, a business and community coalition, has noted that in 2001, at least eight patients in the Harris County region died when they were turned away from a major trauma facility and sent instead to trauma centers that could not provide full services.[45] As the head of the Houston Public Health Task Force said, �when a hospital is on diversion, it doesn�t matter if you own the hospital, because you are not getting in.�

http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/uninsured05/

And, moreover, there's this:

"In the ten years from 1988 to 1998, over 1,000 emergency rooms across the nation have closed down due to budget cuts and other problems. Part of this problem is that many emergency rooms are unable to deal with the overload of patients who do not have any insurance coverage. While some may think that these patients are the nation's poor and underprivileged, in reality, they are common working people, faced with health insurance costs that have grown at a staggering rate in the past few years. Rates in many areas for a family of four now exceed $500 per month for coverage that only a few years ago ran in the $100 per month range. Since salary increases have not kept pace with these insurance raises, families are faced with reducing their standard of living, even on basic essentials, or dropping health care. Many opt for the latter. The most recent figures show that 42.5 million Americans are without health insurance, and when private physicians or clinics will not treat them, they turn to the emergency room as a primary health care provider.

Another problem is that of overcrowding. Many hospital emergency rooms are too small to serve the population of patients who pass through their doors and simply have to turn away patients. Because of those millions of uninsured, the patient load at emergency rooms across the nation has reached the point that quality care can not be provided. According to the American Hospital Association,"If the emergency rooms don�t work well, there is no place else for patients to go...so this is a sign of our health care system under extraordinary stress."

[jillford64]

[johnslat]

Dear jillford54,
Tomorrow's fine; I doubt the health care situation will have gotten much better by then.
Regards,
John

[jillford64]

John -

Just a quick note that the report you refer to:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf

was updated for 2007:
[url] http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf [/url]

In Appendix C of this report, the USCB acknowledges that health insurance coverage is likely to be underreported and gives some reasons why, starting with the fact that income, not health insurance, is the main focus of the ASEC questionnaire from which the data are derived. The report also states that the esitmate of the number of people approximates the number of people who are uninsured at a specific point in time during the year rather than the number of people uninsured for the entire year.

What got me interested in knowing who the 45.7 million really includes and why I started doing some research was a recent debate on NPR where one of the guys explained why the 45.7 million is misleading and that that the true number is closer to 20 million. When I have more time, I will look for the podcast or transcript on the NPR website. I also found a couple of articles on the internet that discuss the statistic and I will re-find those as well, but I've got to get back to my day job here.

I am not debating whether or not health care insurance is an issue. What I wanted to point out (and should have done a better job of) in my post is that people (myself included) throw out numbers like 50 million or 45 million or 20 million when it suits their purpose without understanding or explaining how those numbers were derived or what they really mean.

[johnslat]

Dear jillford64,
Thank you - and, of course, considering the current economic meltdown and the resulting unemployment (usually with consequent loss of health coverage)

"The number of unemployed persons increased by 851,000 to 12.5 million in
February, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent. Over the past 12
months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by about 5.0 million,
and the unemployment rate has risen by 3.3 percentage points. (See table
A-1.)"

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

I think it may be safe to assume that the number of people without health coverage has likely increased a fair bit since those good old days of 2007.

Here are some more numbers:

"One reason is the power of various medical industry lobbies. Americans spend as much on healthcare today as the entire gross domestic product of France and Spain combined, notes one economist. If health-related costs continue to rise rapidly, spending could soon equal the entire GDP (that is, the output of goods and services) of Germany.

The $2.1 trillion the US spends per year on healthcare creates "strong interest groups," notes Mr. Aaron. These include a host of politically powerful private health insurance companies and for-profit hospitals."

By David R. Francis / Christian Science Monitor

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/news/article.php?id=9905
Regards,
John

[Chancellor]