Here is a link to the 2007 Census Bureau report on
"Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the
United States: 2007"
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
Here are the facts I got out of the sections dealing with
"Health Insurance Coverage":
1) 253.4 million "people" are covered and 45.7
million "people" do not have health coverage of any
kind. You are considered to have had coverage whether you had
insurance for the entire year, or for part of the year.
(although it also states research shows health insurance is
underreported because people will make the mistake of
indicating thier current situation at the time of the
questioning rather than indicating if they insurance at any
time during the year.). If I was running the survey and
somebody answered that they did not have coverage for the
entire year, I would want to know,"Well, for what period
of that year do you think you or your household had
coverage?" My best guess that this isn't asked because
there are huge funding streams for programs based on this and
if they performed it truly like they should there would be a
lot of funding that would go away, and there is a lot of
political pressure to keep these numbers "grey" so
that this funding can continue.....really sad and embarassing
in my opinion. When you look at the numbers you have to take
them with a grain of salt because they didn't take this
questioning out to the next level down this means the numbers
reported are misleading in that it states 45.7 million
"people" don't have insurance, when the number is
actually higher than stated because I wouldn't consider
someone who had coverage for 2 months out of the year really
insured, etc...
2) Uninsured people has increased to 45.7 million, but the
uninsured rate of the US has been constanty hovering around
15% since 1992. This tells me we don't have an issue with
access to healthcare, we have an issue with healthcare costs.
We have to fix costs, and this plan to try and cover everybody
doesn't even address the real issue so it will fail, and fail
miserably.
3) Here is a set of interesting numbers: 35.92 million
"Americans/Naturalized Citizens" are uninsured,
9.737 million "Not a Citizen" are uninsured. This
comes to 35.92 million "Americans" uninsured. We
certainly shouldn't be basing budgets on poeple who don't
belong here...people say they are here and we depend on these
people to do so many jobs....so what...I have a lot of things
in my apartment that weren't made in the US but I bought at a
store meaning "it was important that somebody somewhere
else made the thing", but we don't feel compelled to go
pay for their healthcare costs overseas because they sell us
goods...just because they are "here" doesn't really
change that argument. You are either a US citizen, you are
here in some legal way, shape or form, or you are here
illegally.
4) Oh let's dig deeper into this so we can pull back the onion
of deceipt. Forget the politics of these numbers above and
let's just look at this from an income standpoint, which makes
this look more like "business" decisions rather than
politics. These are the numbers that really made my eyes pop
and should make everybody else's:
Uninsured "people" and average Household income:
<25K/year - 13.539 million
25-49K/year - 14.5 million
50-75K/year - 8.488 million
>75K/year - 9.115 million
This report states the average household income in the US was
50.233K for 2007 (for the lower 48 states). The 2007 Health
and Human Resources Poverty line for a family of four in 2007
was 20.65K/year. Any houshold earning above 50K/year certainly
is either making the choice to not have coverage or are
illegals making a good living and don't want to get health
insurance because it would put them into a system and
increases their exposure to being found out and deported. In
any case, that is 17.603 million people who don't need any
kind of assistance and there should be no provisions made for
them. For the 25-49K group I would say the majority of these
people choose to not have heathcare either. They are either
young, out of school and choose to rather have the money to
spend, are young and just want to have more money int thier
pocket or have made some bad fiscal choices and in order to
try and have more income have taken the risk of not having
health insurance. I'm sure anybody can go out and find cases
to show how someone needs help here or there, but I would say
the 2-sigma band for this bell-curve would easily show
probably 90% of these people made their choice to not have
healthcare. Let's not forget that all people who dont have
healthcare don't always go to the emergency room. My brother
and his family have been on and off healthcare from
time-to-time, and they have chosen to take the risk of having
more money in their pocket and they pay for any doctor/dental
visits out-of-pocket (probably because the costs are in fact
high...which goes back to my sentences earlier). If there is a
real problem and they do have to go to the Emergency Room,
yeah they are going to be in trouble but that is the risk and
choice people make. I'll be generous and say 75% are making
the choice. Since 20K is the poverty line for a family of 4,
I'll take that whole bottom bracket and 25% of the 25-49K
bracket which comes to a total of 17.164 million
"people" without health insurance or at risk. For
the sake of arguing, since there are 9.737 million "Not a
citizen" people without health insurance, I'll go ahead
and proportionatly distribute that number for the four income
brackets stated with a 40, 30 , 20, 10 distribution. This
means there are 3.989 million "Not a Citizen" people
who are included in the <25K bracket, and .73 million
"Not a citizen" people in the 25-49K bracket. THIS
MEANS THE SUM TOTAL OF "AMERICANS" WITHOUT HEALTH
INSURANCE IS SOMEWHERE AROUND 12.445 MILLION POEPLE. SO FROM
NOW ON ANYTIME YOU HEAR A POLITICIAN SAY THERE ARE 45 MILLION
PEOPLE UNINSURED THAT IS A LIE.
For a trillion dollars (to start) that comes to around
80,353.56 cents per person. My healthcare costs (for me and my
employer) per year for my "household" run about 11K
(medical, dental and eyecare). So when Washington says they
are going to tax exorbently expensive healthcare plans are
they going to be taxing their own plan???? who is out-of-whack
here??????