What Do You Think About the Uninsured Problem in America?

Posted on | October 4, 2006 | Comments Off on What Do You Think About the Uninsured Problem in America?

As I discussed in this week’s Health Politics program, there are approximately 46 million American citizens without health insurance. But that number is actually rather misleading because it only counts those who went without insurance for an entire year. If you consider people who went without for at least one month in 2005, the number jumps to 64 million uninsured.

That’s a lot of people. And believe it or not, not all of them are poor. The number of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41% in 2005. That’s up from 28% in 2001.

Experts blame a confluence of events, including rising health care costs and employers dropping coverage, and the health of our nation is taking a beating. A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study found that cost prevented 41.1% of uninsured adults from seeing a doctor, compared to 9.2% of individuals with coverage.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this problem, which seems to be spiraling out of control. Have you gone without health insurance? Did your health suffer? Is our government doing enough to reverse this growing trend? Should we turn the problem over to non-traditional health sector leaders like those in finance and technology?

Health Politics will continue to cover this topic, and you can be a part of the discussion. Please post your comments below.