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?
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Article published on Aug 6 04
12:59AM.
