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Last Updated: Nov 19th, 2006 - 12:21:58 |
30 Aug, (foodconsumer.org) - Millions of Americans are shunning health insurance and their numbers hit record levels in 2005, according to the latest U.S. Census statistics. More than 46 million Americans lacked health insurance last year, an increase of 1.3 million over 2004 figures, the report released Tuesday said.
In 2004 15.4 percent of the population was uninsured, while 15.9 percent of the population or 46.6 million remained uninsured the following year, the Census Bureau said. David S. Johnson, chief of the bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division said one of the reasons for the decline in the number of those insured was that employers were not offering health coverage.
Only 59.5 percent Americans had employer-sponsored insurance in 2005, down from 59.8 percent in 2004. Even the number of people purchasing private health insurance plans dropped. "The increase in the uninsured rate can be attributed to these two declines," Johnson said.
Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid saw an increase in the number of people taking up health insurance. The data showed that people opting for Medicare and Medicaid increased from 79.4 million in 2004 to 80.2 million in 2005. But "the percentage of people covered by government health insurance remained unchanged at 27.3 percent," Johnson said.
One of the worst hit segments of the population as far as health coverage was concerned was under-18s. The proportion and number of uninsured children increased between 2004 and 2005, from 10.8 percent to 11.2 percent and from 7.9 million to 8.3 million, respectively.
The U.S. Census Bureau analyzed the health insurance data after surveying 100,000 households. However despite these shortcomings, the numbers of Americans with health insurance increased 1.4 million to 247.3 million in 2005.
But since the population increased to 293.8 million last year from 291.2 million in 2004, the rise in the number of insured people was not enough to keep pace with the number of people not having health coverage.
Experts said of all the numbers in the latest report, the most worrisome was the drop in employer-sponsored insurance. Employer-based insurance makes up the largest share, covering 174.8 million people.
Kathleen Stoll, health policy director for Families USA, a health-care advocacy group in Washington said that Medicare and Medicaid do not offer benefits to dependants and hence the number of uninsured children kept increasing.
"The problem is employer-based programs are becoming harder to come by and the public programs aren't filling in those gaps," Stoll said.
Additionally the funding for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) is lacking and this is making life tough for poor people. "As states struggle with their budgets, they're implementing policies that make it harder for kids to get and stay enrolled," Stoll said. "That's a big concern."
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington said the increasing numbers of uninsured Americans was bankrupting America, both in the pocketbook and in health."
The reason for this, Benjamin said was that poor people rarely went to a doctor to seek preventive care until a disease has progressed often suffer needlessly, drive up the cost of care and lower the nation's productivity.
"If you consider health to be a currency, people are not getting enough of it," Benjamin said. "We're letting people get sick because we're not taking care of them when we can do something for them, and do something for them in an economical manner."
The Census report found that the number of uninsured was generally high in non-white and immigrant populations. In the age group of 18 to 64 there were 72 percent people without any health insurance and they worked either full or part time, according to the survey.
Stoll said that the problem of finding coverage for the 46.6 million people was not the government’s alone, but of all the people who had "health insurance and watch the costs of uncompensated care get passed onto them."
"When people are uninsured they do still get sick and go to the hospital," she said. "The cost of that care for the uninsured is shifted by the hospital to what they charge insurance companies and the insurance companies shift it to us."
There were geographical disparities as well. The uninsured rate for those in the South increased from 18.2 percent to 18.6 percent between 2004 and 2005 and in the West from 17.4 percent in 2004 to 18.1 percent in 2005.
In contrast the Midwest and Northeast had the lowest uninsured rates in 2005, at 11.9 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively.
Statewise, Texas had the highest percentage of uninsured at 24.6 percent, while Minnesota had the lowest at 8.7 percent.
Highlights of the report
* The number of people with health insurance coverage increased by 1.4 million to 247.3 million between 2004 and 2005, and the number without such coverage rose by 1.3 million to 46.6 million
* The uninsured rate in non-Hispanic whites remained unchanged at at 11.3 percent and 22.1 million, while for blacks it held steady at 19.6 percent and 7.2 million.
* The rate for Asians increased to 17.9 percent in 2005, up from 16.5 percent in 2004. The number of uninsured Asians was 2.3 million, up from 2 million.
* The uninsured rate for Hispanics was 32.7 percent in 2005, while the number of uninsured Hispanics increased from 13.5 million to 14.1 million.
* Around 29.9 percent of people who reported American Indian and Alaska Native as their race were without coverage. The three-year average for Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders was 21.8 percent.
* The uninsured rate for the foreign-born population was statistically unchanged at 33.6 percent. The number of uninsured naturalized citizens increased from 2.3 million in 2004 to 2.5 million in 2005.
* There were 19.8 million uninsured people in the South, compared to 12.4 million in the West. The approximate numbers of uninsured were 7.8 million in the Midwest and 6.7 million in the Northeast.
Ed Howard, executive vice president of the Alliance for Health Reform said the number uninsured people posed a huge problem for the health system.
"It costs incredible amounts in lost productivity and quality of life and competitiveness overseas. It makes economic sense for everyone to be covered. It would cost about $65 billion to cover everyone, and we lose about $130 billion a year because we don't have coverage for everyone," he said.
He said that Americans must concede that everyone was entitled to affordable health coverage. That would be the first step in dealing with the issue. "Over the long term, this means some combination of private and public steps that are going to move us in the direction of broader coverage," he said. "And probably some combination of public and private steps will hold down costs."
© 2004-2005 by foodconsumer.org unless otherwise specified
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