Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Latest Report on the ‘Uninsured’, Pt.3  –  Few ‘free-riders’; most ‘hard-hit’.

Previous…

Mr. Hadley forewarns us that things are only going to get worse if we continue with such high cost for health care and don’t resolve the problem of such a huge population without health insurance. When considering the high risks of debilitating complications due to ‘problems let go’ and the fact that these with no health insurance are having to pay a much higher percentage of their medical costs out-of-pocket than those with health insurance, Mr. Hadley hardly considers this a ‘free-ride’. The way he puts it is: “Contrary to popular myth, they are not all free riders."

Averaged out, those without health insurance have to spend about $583 from their own ‘purse’. The average medical cost of ‘this patient’ is actually around $1,686. At the same, that person’s counterpart who has health insurance will be paying around $681of their average annual medical cost, which is about $3,915. So the insured patients are responsible for 17% of their total annual medical costs.

But note, however, that the person having health insurance is also receiving well over twice as much healthcare as the person with no health insurance. Mr. Hadley escalates his warning by noting that this is not a stagnated situation. It is, but one frame of, a motion picture that continues to worsen with time for many reasons.

That person with less treatment for lack of health insurance is the reason for the statistical proof of how much more expensive treatment becomes, if sickness is not caught at an earlier stage.

Continued…