Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Census on Unsensible Health Insurance, Pt.1 – Census Report, good and bad.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just completed the first Health Insurance Census since the Bush admin took over. Not good news, but good information. The drop from 47 million Americans without health insurance to 45.7 million appears good, but may give the false impression that the crises is subsiding. It would be a deception to believe that the problem is going away on it’s own. The fact is that, without government intervention, the number of Americans without health insurance actually increased again this year. The reason for the ‘apparent’ drop is due to added enrolment in government programs.

The good news may be that there’s less ‘bad news’. Now for the bad health insurance/care news. The Institute of Medicine reports to us that 18,000 Americans die each year because they can’t get access to healthcare. Up ‘til now, the latest figures we had on this was about 22.000. Whether down or just more accurate, it’s a number to keep an eye on. Undoubtedly, health insurance is a big factor. But that’s not the end of it.

It was also found that, even people who have health insurance are being devastated by huge medical bills. To boot, with private health insurance rates and health care costs continually rising, the point is being reached where more and more employers are dropping coverage and employees are being priced out of protection. The consensus is derived that private insurance is just too inefficient and “constitutes an expensive bureaucracy that stands between patients and doctors,” as Alice Carver words is in her fine article, posted on the www.efluxmedia.com/ website.

Continued…