Information was released this week from several groups on an issue of concern to many: health insurance.

According to a Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) report, after accounting for population growth, 8.9 million fewer Americans had employer health insurance coverage in 2003 over 2001. The reasons for this include workers becoming unemployed (thus not having an employer to cover them) and increasing costs of health insurance (thus employers ceased offering coverage, or employees declined to enroll in programs employers offered because their share of the cost became too high).

Based on 2002 statistics cited in a Kaiser Family Foundation/eHealthInsurance report, there were already 43.3 million non-elderly Americans lacking health insurance. And, according to an August 3, 2004 news release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among the uninsured were some 8.5 million children (11.6% of American children), nearly half of which have not had a well-child visit in the past year.

The good news is that public coverage gained some ground among the under-65 set (it increased from 9% to 12%), thus offsetting a significant increase in the number of uninsured persons. But when this public coverage increase only covers those with low-income, how "good" is it, and what's the average middle-income person to do?