Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Analyzing the Divergence, Pt.3 – What will McCain’s plan do for the 45.7 million uninsured?

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All this shifting is expected to begin covering as many as 5 million of the 45.7 million Americans who have no health insurance. After five years’ time though, that figure is expected to dwindle back to covering only 1 million of those Americans without health insurance. By then this figure will have grown well beyond the 45.7 million point because of the constant increase in the uninsured segment trend, which has been constant over the last 8 years*. Note, there is no long-term focus on Mr. McCain’s plan to help the 45.7 million Americans who currently have no health insurance.

Exacerbating (making worse) the situation will be the effect of employers to not offer health insurance benefits any longer. This is already a problem and has been for the last few years. By McCain stripping away the major incentive to employers of the tax-exempt health insurance, the trend of employers dropping those benefits is expected to begin speeding up.

When that happens, many Americans will begin realizing their worst nightmare. Any covered family member who has been diagnosed with a pre-existing or chronic condition over the years of being covered under and employer-based health insurance plan will be dropped. Now they’re on the outside. The ‘lucky’ ones with mild conditions like asthma or allergies may be able to obtain individual health insurance at double the rate they were paying.

The others, with more serious conditions, won’t be so ‘lucky’. Unless mandated by the government, health insurance providers will simply deny coverage to those who formerly had employee-based coverage. Now they’re just ‘out of luck’.

* Although a decrease for 2007 (from 47 million to 45.7 million) was reported by the US Census, it was found that, left unattended, the figure continued to rise. That is, the system did not improve, the government intervened one time. For the straight-forward details, please refer to the article series entitled: “Census on Unsensible Health Insurance”.

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