Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Cambridge Study: Millions of ‘Uninsurable’, Pt.2 -- Where we’ve been, are now and are going.

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Back in 2004, there were only 36 million Americans without health insurance. So, if we project the 31% increase from 2004 to 2006 (36 million to 47 million) and apply it to the 11.4 million of 2004, it would be reasonable infer that this figure had risen to 14.8 million without health insurance by 2006. Since 2006 is the latest substantially reliable data for these figures, if the proportions found in the study have remained constant, then we can extend that number up to today and it would nominally be around 18.4 million chronically ill without health insurance.

This study is unique in that it “provides the first national estimate of the number of adults [with no health insurance] and [have] these potentially serious, but treatable conditions,” as treated by the ‘Wicked Local” article. Some of the data was drawn from an NHANES (National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey). In that survey, 12,500 working-aged people (from 18 to 64 years of age) were interviewed. The criteria used to classify this segment, was that they had at least, one of 7 listed chronic medical conditions, and that none of these people had health insurance.

These new findings are not totally new. They corroborate with findings from a previous study that was published in the July 22 issue of Health Affairs. That study concluded that “Access to care among uninsured, non-elderly U.S. adults with chronic conditions actually got worse between 1997 and 2006. “ Now, as it was back then, these chronically ill with no health insurance are still not getting the medical care they need.

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