Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Those Worst Off, Pt.6 – When all other doors are closed, use the ER.

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Continuing with Florida, with 3.8 million people having no health insurance, their state pool program has dwindled over the 17-years of closed enrollment to only 313 enrollees. This represents a service percentage of, as low as, .0082% of those being served, compared to those who might be served. Heavy restriction. The American Cancer Society recently conducted an informal survey. From nearly 2,700 citizens that called their health insurance hot line, they learned that only 2% had become enrolled in high-risk health insurance pools within a two-month period of being referred to them. The associate director of policy for the group’s Cancer Action Network, Stephen Finan commented, "In most cases, we know they probably didn’t apply because they discovered high premiums or pre-existing condition clauses and just didn’t bother.”

Although, we have no census data on what is going on with these ‘medically uninsurable’ people, we do know that 11% of all individual applicants were denied health insurance in 2006 because of medical reasons. When considering older applicants (people that are aged 50 , or more) the percentage doubled to 22% (this figure provided by an industry trade group called America’s Health Insurance Plans.) Providing affordable health insurance for the ‘uninsurable’ is of utmost importance. It is known that 75% of our nation’s health care spending is caused by only 15% of our citizens. With nowhere else to go, they must seek treatment at the emergency rooms at hospitals that must provide for them, because to turn them away would be illegal. This leaves the emergency facilities with a $30 billion deficit, with no one who can pay.

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