Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Census on Unsensible Health Insurance, Pt.3 – Other issues, not much better.

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On other issues, providing health insurance to the children has improved some. The number of children without health insurance has fallen from 8.7 million down to 8.1 million. Much of this due to government-sponsored public health insurance programs like SCHIP (State Childrens’ Health Insurance Plans).

On a similar note, as mentioned earlier, the only reason for the reduction of the 47 million total population without health insurance going down to 45.7 million was because of government-sponsored public health insurance. This new census indicated that an additional 1 million of these people were added to these government-sponsored health insurance enrolments. The total number of these enrolments now stands at 23 million.

As far as skyrocketing health insurance/care costs, the employer/employee split has remained much the same. The employer had carried the greatest brunt of this because they also carry the highest percentage of cost. That said, it is also known that both are being squeezed out because of these sky-rocketing cost increases. Because some 160 million Americans depend on this coverage, this is a significant problem. The average cost per family across our nation has jumped about $2,500. It was only $8,281 back in 2001. By 2005, it had jumped to $10,278 for the same coverage.

Even when considering the scaled-back cut-rate health insurance policies, which have created a 27 million group of ‘under-insured’ (those with ‘inadequate health insurance’), the numbers are still falling. In 2006, 59.7% of our population was covered by employer-based health insurance. By 2007, that percentage had dropped to only 59.3%.

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