More enrolling in federal health programs : JO CIAVAGLIA
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-09-14 09:44:13 | Word Count: 835
The number of people without health insurance in the U.S. remained unchanged last year, but the stability is largely attributed to more people enrolling in government health programs, according to new U.S. Census statistics.
The 2008 Census numbers also reveal that middle-age, middle-income working Americans represented a growing portion of uninsured adults during the first year since the U.S. sank into an economic recession.
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Overall, the estimated number of U.S. uninsured rose slightly - 46.3 million, up from 45.7 million.
Roughly 10 percent of Pennsylvania residents were uninsured throughout the year. In neighboring New Jersey, it was 15 percent. Both states each had 1.2 million residents uninsured.
Last month, the Bucks County Health Improvement Partnership adult clinic in Bensalem, which serves uninsured county residents, treated the most patients in its history - more than 600 visits, Executive Director Sally Fabian said.
"That tends to be a low month, in general; the warm weather months are often when people are healthier," she added. "If that is an indicator of the fall and winter to come, it's really ominous. The numbers just don't seem to stop."
While the new Census figures show more people in the U.S. obtained health insurance last year - 255.1 million, up from 253.4 million in 2007, the rise is attributed to growth in government programs, which now cover 29 percent of the population.
The number of Americans covered by Medicare, Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance and military insurance increased by more than 4 million, to 87.4 million, which partially offset an eighth straight year of declines in employer-provided health plans, analysts say.
Last year, the number of people covered under employer plans dropped from 177.4 million to 176.3 million, or 58 percent of the population. Analysts warned that increases in the overall uninsured were likely to continue.
Based on current job losses, some researchers estimate the current uninsured number is closer to 50 million - the same number the Congressional Budget Office now cites.
"The last decade has been marked by a steady increase in public insurance programs," said Mark McClellan, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution.
In Pennsylvania, another indicator of the growing uninsured ranks is the waiting list for AdultBasic, the state's subsidized health care program for low-income residents who don't qualify for government help.
As of this month, more than 304,000 are on the waiting list for AdultBasic coverage, according to the Pennsylvania Insurance Commission, which oversees the program. Since July, the waiting list has grown by more than 32,000 names.
At the start of the economic recession in December 2007, the wait list had 95,656 names on it.
Most people in the U.S. without health coverage last year - 28.5 million - had household incomes under $50,000 with the largest number of uninsured among people earning $25,000 to $49,000, according to the new figures. Among households earning at least $50,000 a year, 17.7 million were uninsured.
Median U.S. household income, the amount earned by a family at the middle of the income scale, fell from $52,163 to $50,303 in 2008, according to new Census poverty figures, also released last week.
Nearly half of the overall uninsured - 20.9 million - worked full time, while 10 million didn't work at all during the year.
Among the foreign-born population, the Census estimated that 33 percent were uninsured in 2008, a rate that remained statistically unchanged from 2007. Of the estimated 12.3 million foreign-born U.S. residents, 9.5 million are not citizens, a number that includes temporary and legal residents, as well as illegal residents.
The most dramatic drop among the uninsured was among children, a group helped by recent expansions of government health insurance.
For children under age 18, the uninsured numbers and percentage rate both fell to their lowest level since 1987, the first year that comparable health insurance data were collected. An estimated 7.3 million children were uninsured last year, or 9.9 percent.
"The good news is we saw more kids getting coverage through public programs," said Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care policy group. "But the number of adults going without health insurance is increasing, and we haven't even yet seen the full effect of the job changes."
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