Millions Of Americans Lack Health Insurance

By Author: asdas
Total Articles: 105
Comment this article

Millions of Americans lack health insurance and, with the economy floundering, that is likely to increase, the National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday. "Unless health insurance is made more affordable, the number of uninsured Americans is likely to continue growing over time," said Mary Sue Coleman, co-chairwoman of the committee that wrote the report. The report is the first of six planned by the Institute of Medicine over two years. The series is planned to find out who lacks health insurance and why, determine what the consequences are and provide the groundwork for debate on how to correct the problem. The institute is part of the academy, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
This first report seeks to draw a picture of the millions who lack insurance. It does not offer any recommendations. "Much of what Americans think they know about the uninsured is wrong," said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a public health professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, who also worked on the report. The Census Bureau reported last month that 38. 7 million Americans ...
... went without coverage for all of 2000, compared with 39. 3 million the year before, thanks to the booming economy. Experts say the trend is likely to reverse this year, given that the economy was slowing even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Unfortunately, the recent economic slowdown might have reversed the modest gains in coverage that were seen in 1999 and 2000," said Kellermann on Thursday.
About two-thirds of Americans under age 65 are covered by health insurance through their job or that of a relative, the report found. That means many people gain or lose coverage as they marry or divorce, change jobs, start or graduate from college or go through other transitions. At some point, one out of seven Americans goes without coverage for a full year; many others lack coverage for shorter periods.
The report said that with insurance costs rising, more employers and individuals may conclude they are unable to afford coverage. Premium increases were often absorbed by employers in the strong economy of the 1990s, but that may not continue as the economy softens, the report said. The panel found that about 13. 6 million of the uninsured work for employers that do not offer health insurance. Individually purchased coverage may be prohibitively costly. In the case of such public insurance programs as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the report said that stringent eligibility requirements and enrollment processes can make coverage difficult to obtain and hard to keep.