Uninsured Population Swells in Advance of U.S. Health Law

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-26/uninsured-population-swells-in-advance-of-u-s-health-law.html

Almost half of working-age adults in the U.S. had inadequate health insurance or no coverage at all last year, a widening deficit that the Affordable Care Act should mitigate, according to data from the Commonwealth Fund.

About 84 million were uninsured or underinsured, 3 million more than when the 2010 health law was signed and 20 million more than in 2003, the New York-based nonprofit group, which advocates for better health care, said today in a report. About 80 million adults who had medical conditions said they chose not to see a doctor or fill a prescription because of the cost.

At least 85 percent of these people will become eligible for some type of subsidized or government health insurance under the U.S. health law when the core parts of it take effect in January, the Commonwealth Fund said. Younger adults are benefiting from existing provisions as the proportion of people ages 19 to 25 who were uninsured at some point in the year fell to 41 percent from 48 percent in 2010.

“It will be critical to continue to monitor the effects of the law as the major provisions go into effect in 2014 and beyond to ensure it achieves its goal of near-universal, comprehensive health insurance,” Sara Collins, the vice president for affordable health insurance at the Commonwealth Fund, in a statement.

[datasuspect]

1. i'm so grateful that obamacare has made it possible for me

to select from a host of expensive insurance plans that don't cover shit worth a damn.

yay!!!!!

[raccoon]

3. You got that right. I used to have an individual plan that fit that description. nt

[Doctor_J]

6. Luckily Single Payer was taken "off the table"

Otherwise

1. Everyone would have health care, and
2. those insurance execs would be on food stamps instead of collecting billion dollar bonuses.

[bluedigger]

2. If I can just keep it together until January...

Maybe actually see a doctor by next February or March...

Yup, things are really looking up!

[AnotherMcIntosh]

4. It was a false equivalency to equate health-insurance-for-profit reform with health-care reform.

It still is.

[southernyankeebelle]

5. Is there one place that people who are out of work at the present time and lost

their insurance will be able to get help with insurance? I have a son who lost his decent paying job and lost his insurance and his wife is looking for work. Our state didn't go into Obamacare helping the working poor. I worry if something happens to my granddaughter who is only 7. He is to embarrassed to go to even get food stamps. I dunno I worry about people today and tommorrow. Our congress doesn't give a shit about low income people really.

[Doctor_J]

7. Maybe I am being too harsh

Younger adults are benefiting from existing provisions as the proportion of people ages 19 to 25 who were uninsured at some point in the year fell to 41 percent from 48 percent in 2010.

Only 41%!!! Not even half! The glass is half-full!

[Newest Reality]

8. I just wonder if we are all

going to spend the rest of our lives having to cater to the special interests of large corporations who are, in fact, the people and families of the 1% and, more importantly those critters that are the .01%.

What is the difference between a Kingdom or a Fiefdom and what we are calling a representative, political system, other than layers of complexity that serve to obscure the bottom-line nature of the game.

Who really obtains satisfaction? Who gets what they want?

The GOP is obviously the more open and outward representation of the industrial and corporate giants, (and their wealthy families and friends). In fact, the more they put their feet in their mouths, the more any facade that suggests otherwise cracks and crumbles.

So, we can hope and imagine that there will be change and improvements, but how does this come about when lobbyists for the NRA, the insurance industry, and various other "owners" of our national wealth and ways and means have top priority and are able to exercise it? Their priorities are in our faces and those priorities are the Military Industrial Complex, period. The cuts in programs we vitally need in crises tell us this point-blank.

It is hard to believe that, considering the above and checking the facts, that any of the current public relations, from politics to media, are anything but a means to cajole, appease and distract us in ways that lead us to merely assume that we, (in America #2) are invested, protected, represented and free in what turns out to be a country that is only for rent to us from those who really own it flat out.

What can you expect under those circumstances? That is, especially when people are able to, (want to, have to, can only) believe that it is otherwise. We are able to live in words and memories and our emotions give that energy, especially when we are subject to continual conditioning and nothing more than the Pavlovian rewards and punishments that encourage delusional thinking and expectations that do not have viability or a bona fide result.