The number of Americans without health insurance jumped to 43.6-million last year, the largest increase in a decade, but the more ominous story is inside these numbers. More than half the increase came from households with incomes between $25,000 and $74,999, and slightly less than half are people who work full-time. One in five middle-class families had no insurance.
In other words, the face of medical neglect in America is growing more economically diverse. The implications, both politically and medically, are enormous. As Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, puts it: "This is no longer an issue of altruism on behalf of a discredited and disadvantaged population. It is now a concern of self-interest for middle-class and working families."
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson was quick to responded to the U.S. Census Bureau report, calling the medically uninsured "a complex problem that requires a comprehensive solution." But he is kidding only himself when he asserts that President Bush offers "an ambitious plan" to combat it. His tax credits and tax-free medical savings plans are more of the same, and states are already beginning to reverse the gains that were made in Medicaid health coverage.
Presidents and Congresses alike have long ignored the medically uninsured, hoping emergency rooms will quietly take care of the problem. But that's callous and self-defeating. People who have no health insurance are six times more likely to show up at the emergency room, according to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, and uninsured adults are 2.5 times more likely to miss early diagnosis of treatable cancers and 25 percent more likely to die from heart attacks. Babies born to uninsured low-income mothers are 60 percent more likely to die in their first month of life. The total cost of care for uninsured patients reached $98.8-billion in 2001, and, given the reimbursement squeeze by Medicare and private health plans, hospitals have few ways to cushion the financial impact.
The trend inside the numbers of the latest Census report defies the usual patterns of poverty. Private health premiums jumped 28.5 percent in the past two years, and even large companies, long the bedrock of American health care insurance, are being priced out of the market. Congress may be focused on prescription drugs for the elderly, but working-class families are desperate as well.
