Lindsey Bloomberg
Lisa Rodriguez
Alli Shortt
Alyssa Wood
A controversial issue in today’s society is health care. In whatever context, health care affects the family structure, and socioeconomic class in the United States. We decided to focus on health care for our blog research because America is in a health care crisis and President Obama is presenting a plan for universal health care in our country. From race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic status to immigration the current health care system affects all demographics. Lacking power, and education the lower class population usually suffers the most from our current health care system.
According to figures from the New York Times, over 45 million Americans go without health insurance, and that statistic is growing every year. Although programs like Medicare provide for some elderly and lower class citizens, there are still many populations who are not covered. (Social Problems By William Kornelum)
28% of middle income families (income being 30,000-75,000) struggle to afford health insurance. Health care costs in the United States are higher than any developed country. The total annual premium for a typical family health insurance plan is approximately 13,000 a year (in 2008). (www.healthcareproblems.org/health-care-statisics.htm)
The National Coalition on Health Care provided National statistics regarding how many Americans are uninsured.
How Many Americans Are Uninsured?
• Several studies estimate the number of uninsured Americans. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 47 million Americans, or 20 percent of the population under the age of 65, were without health insurance in 2008, their latest data available.1
• The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) estimated that the percentage of uninsured Americans under age 65 represented 27 percent of the population. According to the MEPS data, nearly 54 million Americans under the age of 65 were uninsured in the first-half of 2007. 2
• A recent study shows that based on the effects of the recession alone (not job loss), it is projected that nearly seven (7) million Americans will lose their health insurance coverage between 2008 and 2010. 3 Urban Institute researchers estimate that if unemployment reaches 10 percent, another six (6) million Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. Taking these numbers together, it is conceivable that by next year, 57 to 60 million Americans will be uninsured.
• The Urban Institute estimates that under a worse case scenario, 66 million Americans will be uninsured by 2019. 4
• Nearly 90 million people – about one-third of the population below the age of 65 spent a portion of either 2007 or 2008 without health coverage.
The following charts are from the United States Department of Health and Human Services. They provide a snapshot of who is insuring those with health insurance, ages of the uninsured, and also ethnicity and the uninsured. The blog is not allowing the images to be shown directly on the blog.
The website is:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/05/uninsured-cps/index.htm#The
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This is an interesting blog topic -- timely and informative. Are there any particular questions your group would like to pose to facilitate a conversation of this topic? Also, it is very helpful to have sources that we may refer to. Can you provide the citations for the data included in your group's posting?
ReplyDeleteThanks for kicking-off the blog this semester and I look forward to reading the discussion!
Dr. Amy R-R
What are people's feelings towards health care today? More people are effected than we think, and the reform posed by President Obama will in fact effect us all. The statistics used in the first post were taken from The National Coalition on Health Care. More statistics can be read at the website: http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that the Urban institute estimates that 66 million Americans will be uninsured by 2019 speaks volumes to the quality of healthcare in America. To think that we are one of the wealthiest, most intelligent and technologically advanced countries in the world, and yet somehow we can't come up with a system that works in the United States; instead we leave 47 million Americans under the age of 65 uninsured. Michael Moore does an incredible job of exploiting the flaws of the United States' healthcare system in his film "Sicko". It examines Canada's healthcare system as compared to the United States, and although it is not perfect or ideal, 89.9% of Canadians are satisfied with the current system. That means only 10.1% are unsatisfied- but they still receive healthcare. That sounds like a pretty good number compared to our numbers of people that are flat out uninsured and subsequently don't receive healthcare.
ReplyDeleteCassidy Freed