Tab for the uninsured keeps rising
A study out this morning says the U.S. government would have to pay $123 billion to provide for all the uninsured nationwide. Renita Jablonski reports what uninsured Americans will spend out of pocket this year.
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Scott Jagow: A study out this morning says the U.S. government would have to pay $123 billion to provide for all the uninsured people in the country. Is that a good investment? Marketplace's Renita Jablonski has more.
Renita Jablonski: Jack Hadley is a professor in the department of health administration policy at George Mason University. He's also the lead author of the study in today's Web edition of Health Affairs, a health policy journal.
Jack Hadley: The main implication is that the longer we wait to expand insurance coverage, the more costly it's going to be.
He says the tab for the uninsured is a lot higher than the last time he did this kind of math back in 2001. That's because there are more uninsured people, they're older, and the cost of health care keeps going up. He says reforming the system now has benefits beyond cost.
Hadley: Greater labor market efficiency, possibly less burden on employers to provide insurance. There's significant national loss that comes from not covering the uninsured.
Hadley says Americans without insurance will spend $30 billion out of pocket this year.
I'm Renita Jablonski for Marketplace.
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From Boulder, CO, 08/25/2008
Look into Physicians for a National Health Plan (http://www.pnhp.org/). Their very well thought-out proposal would cover ALL Americans, not just the uninsured, at a cost far lower than $123 billion.
How? Single-payer health insurance. That $123 billion figure is based on the current broken system we've already got, which serves mostly to keep insurance companies in business.
From McKinney, TX, 08/25/2008
Health care is a right to life issue, and we as a Christian nation should make sure all our people have it, including our illegal immigrants. It says so in Matthew chapter 6.
As our people are having to compete globally with developing nations whose workers don't receive enough income for health care themselves, we are becoming unable to pay for private health care. What's left? Anyone who complains about socialized health care must figure out how we can boost the value of the peoples honest day's work enough so everyone can afford to pay for it themselves. Or else don't tell me how much your political party loves God.
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