Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance; A Noble Goal, Pt.6 – Could you quantify that a little, please?

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Mr. Geyman has gathered some very pertinent data that should deliver some perspective of the size and scope of our nation’s current situation. These are some of his findings:

 • 47 million of the 300 million Americans have no health insurance. Tens of millions more are underinsured to the point that any serious injury or illness could destroy them financially.

 • The mainstay of our working Americans, employer-sponsored health insurance has eroded to where it only covers less than three of five workers now and less than half of the small employers still offer health insurance or even benefits for their employees to get coverage elsewhere for themselves or families.

 • Even with health insurance, half of our nation’s women aged between 19 and 64 years old still spend over 10% of their pay on out-of-pocket health care expenses.

 • The seniors enrolled in supplemental Medigap policies are spending more on the premiums and for health care than all the other groups of seniors, even those with traditional Medicare who don’t have the Medigap coverage. This was the finding of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, during a recent analysis.

 • Due to the high cost of private health insurance, this market share continues to dwindle. Where ever available, the industry is more and more embracing the public markets, which offer generous subsidies. The main problem with this approach, however, is the lack of adequate funding. So, for right now, this growth is limited and further aggregated by skyrocketing medical costs. It only works in cases where the government allocates large amounts of funding. An example of this is the private Medicare Advantage plans. These programs are subsidized as much as 12 to 19% above traditional Medicare for costs.

My thanks to John Geyman and the good people at the Huffington Post for their beneficent work.