Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Lower-income working Americans, lack health insurance and this is quickly becoming the new normal. That's the insinuation of survey results just released by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan association that studies health care. The survey found that 42 percent of non-elderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $42,000 a year were without health care for all or part of 2005. That's up from 27 percent as recently as 2001.
Many of the uninsured reported expenditure their entire savings on health care and/or those they were having complexity paying for basic necessities. And most uninsured adults reported wounding corners to save money - failing to fill prescriptions, skipping medications, going without defensive care. Here’s the other side of the same coin: health insurers' business is lagging, reports The Wall Street Journal, as "rising premiums and medical costs shove more of their traditional-employer customers to shun and curtail company health benefits." And some investors are feeling its ache.
What would happen if Medicare was expanded to cover everyone? You might think that the nation would spend more on health are, since this would mean covering 47 million Americans who are now without insurance. But the uninsured already receive some medical care at public expense - for example, treatment in emergency rooms that would have been both cheaper and more effective if provided in doctors’ offices. If you do the math, it becomes clear that covering everyone under Medicare will actually be significantly cheaper that our current system.
posted by kanth
@ 2:13 AM
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