Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Finding Answers About the Uninsured, Pt.2 – What can we tell?

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What is the reason for this rapidly growing figure? A popular one right now is an influx of population growth, both by birthrate and immigration. Rates were compiled by Dr. David Gratzer, a Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute and published in his recent book called “The Cure.” In his book, Dr. Gratzer provides data from the past covering 10 years from 1990 through 1998. He has compiled this data to show a curve spread of between 14.1% to 16.3% over that time period of those without health insurance. So, the US Census 2006 figure of 15.8 falls well within the “Bollinger bands” of that earlier time period. Interestingly, this period also reflected a simultaneous rise in both more people becoming insured and, at the same time, more people going without health insurance. My caution here is the strong possibility of a multi-co-linearity. A multi-co-linearity is where there is more then one major driving force, each independent of the others. When this happens, inferences as to what is really going on become blurred in complexity. One may be in support of the other, may oppose the other or they may even serve to convolute each other. To simplify that explanation, consider that this historic data was from a different time. The data from that period also shows that 75% of the occurrences of people without health insurance, acquired new insurance within a year. That period is known to be a time of “churning”. Churning is when people keep changing jobs at a rate much higher than normal. In a perfect scenario, everyone who loses a job, gets another job within a year. The ‘90’s were known to be a time of great prosperity, yet a time of turbulence. Jobs were abundant and people were “movin’ on up”.

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