No Health Insurance For 47.5 million in U.S.
According to the US Census Bureau, 45.7 mn Americans had no health insurance in 2007. The good news is that this figure is lower than the similar figure for 2006. In 2006 there were 1.3 mn more uninsured American.
According to the announcement 8.1 mn US kids did not have any kind of health insurance in 2007. However this was 600,000 less than the number of uninsured children in the previous year. So that is a bit of good news here.
The US Health care system is in bad health, however. The improvement is from govt. funded insurance programs like Medicare and SCHIP. Here “insured” refers to any kind of health insurance – both private plans linked to employment or directly purchased or govt. plans connected with the military, Medicaid or Medicare.
The Health insurance of many people is not adequate to protect them from the high insurance bills or assure them of care. In 2008 uninsured Americans paid 30 bn USD out of their pocket towards health care. There are many signs that the US health care system is in trouble. The govt. paid 56 bn USD towards uncompensated health care costs. In addition a high level of disparity in health care has been seen.
