Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Major 'Underinsured' Sector, Pt.1 -- 25 million strong

More breaking news reported by Steven Reinberg, HealthDay reporter for HealthDay News and posted on U.S.News & World Report’s site. Meaningful results are finally in assessing, what is becoming a new buzzword of concern – the ‘Underinsured’ – those whose health insurance is inadequate. With the whole country scrambling for a quick fix to our nation’s health insurance/care crises, many things are being tried. Speculation does not produce results, however. It may take some time to measure health insurance results and we have waited some time. So here are the results. In his fine article, Reinberg informs us that this ‘underinsured’ sector has grown from 16 million strong to a colossal 25 million Americans between the years 2003 and 2007. That’s a 60% rise (the difference of 9 million is 60% of 16 million). Who are these people? Who was hardest hit? Good questions. President of The Commonwealth Fund, Karen Davis nicely answered these questions in a teleconference yesterday. She explains that health “Insurance coverage is the ticket into the health-care system". So the problem is "For too many, that ticket does not buy financial security or genuine access to care.” That answers who these people are. What people were hardest hit? That answer was delivered in a recent Commonwealth Fund report. The report states that the “middle and higher incomes” were. This is the segment of people with family incomes above $40,000. It is a standard because it happens to be the dividing line of ‘twice the federal poverty level’. Why is this an important demarcation? Because it applied so extensively when deciding who gets government health insurance benefits, such as SCHIP, Medicaid, etc.

Continued…