Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Meanwhile, guess I’m just stuck, Pt.1 – The long wait to get help.

The New York Times’ “Telegraph & Gazette” has recently posted a very relevant article on their www.telegram.com site that illuminates the plight of some very immediate struggles caused by our nation’s current health insurance crises. These concern those people caught in the 45-million ‘without health insurance’ segment and also, the 27-million ‘inadequate health insurance’ segment. Until a major health insurance/care reform takes place, many of them are stuck in a static limbo, with no foreseeable relief from the immediate medical problems they now face.

As the article points out, political debates have been endless on health insurance/care reform issues. Any relief that might be forthcoming from them is still, at best, a long time away. Meanwhile, “the plight of American patients has rapidly worsened,” as the article points out. A new substantial segment has been defined from a recent national health insurance/care survey covering the group that, either delays of foregoes required medical attention. The study determined that the size of the segment represents about 59 million Americans. This is one-fifth (20%) of out nation! A major trend has been divulged showing a rapid increase in degradation. It was found that, back in 2003, the number was still a large 36-million strong presence. This shows an incredible increase for this segment of 164% over just the last 4 years.

It was expected that the hardest hit would be those with no health insurance. But the study finds that the newly-discovered ‘underinsured’ segment is even in worse shape. This unfortunate group are, not only draining their budgets just to afford second-rate health insurance, but they are excluded from most of the free programs that are only offered to the ‘uninsured’.

Continued…