Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Cambridge Study: Millions of ‘Uninsurable’, Pt.4 -- The alternate breakdown figures.

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Another way of looking at the plight of the segment of chronically ill Americans without health insurance is by percentage of each condition. We have results on that too: These figures provided by NHANES (the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey), give us these figures:

•  16.1 percent of the 7.8 million people with cardiovascular disease,
•  15.5 percent of the 38.2 million people with hypertension.
•  16.6 percent of the 8.5 million people with diabetes.
•  Misc: Other conditions examined were asthma, high cholesterol, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or a previous diagnosis of cancer.

Authors contend that the study’s findings shed doubt on the common assumption that ‘many of those without health insurance tend to be young and healthy, requiring little in the way of medical care’. This doubt is substantiated because “so many actually have chronic conditions that may be expensive to treat, the cost of covering those without health insurance is often underestimated,” as shared by Dr. Woolhandler. Dr. Woolhandler believes that only a nationalized system of health care will do.

Dr. Wilper emphasizes the stark contrast between the victims having, at least, one of these seven conditions that are without health insurance and the insured individuals of the same group who have health insurance. In the first case, as many as 26% of those report not having any established any medical home. With the second case, only 6.2% had the same report. Going back to the ‘free-rider’ problem, it was found that 7.1% of the first case consider the ER as their medical home, whereas, only 1.1% of the second case do that. The ramification of this practice are substantial, both health-wise and cost-wise.

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