Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Latest Report on the ‘Uninsured’, Pt.1 – $30 million out-of-pocket, $56 billion fronted.

A think-tank, comprised of researchers from the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. and the George Mason University in Fairfax, Va have completed a report concerning medical expense statistics of those Americans without health insurance. From George Mason University in Virginia, Jack Hadley conducted this new study, acting as it’s main author.

Watch for this in the upcoming journal Health Affairs online on Monday. More pieces of the greater health insurance/care picture can now be fit in. The headlines all around are about the $30 million per year currently being spent out of pocket by the segment of Americans with no health insurance.

Moreover, there are additional costs that have to absorbed elsewhere. Because most of these people have nowhere else to turn and, typically, can’t even afford health insurance, they can’t pay their total medical treatment costs either. The report states that about $56 billion worth of this free care being receive has to be absorbed by other entities. One of these entities is the government. In this report it is estimated that the government covers about 75% of the expense, or about $43 billion for those without health insurance. These payments are largely through “Medicaid, the federal-state health-insurance for the poor and Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, as well as state and local taxes,” according to Jane Zhang in her Wall Street Journal article, posted on the http://online.wsj.com/ website. What isn’t covered by the government is usually covered by hospitals, community groups and private physicians.

Continued…