Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mr. McCain on Health Insurance/Care, Pt.5 – "They haven't been very successful"

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When Elizabeth Edwards confronted Mr. McCain with the fact that even he would be denied by private health insurance, his response was "We're not leaving anybody behind." So here is another important issue that requires further addressing, ‘high-risk pools’. Called his Guaranteed Access Plan (GAP), from what we can tell, this is just another ‘high-risk pool’. These are, typically, very expensive health insurance group plans to cover those with poor health that guarantee health insurance companies will still make a respectable profit (respectable profits always seem to be the bottom line).

These group plans began back in the 1970s and through the years have grown little. The number of enrollees today is around 207,000 citizens nationwide. When compared to the 45.7 citizens with no health insurance, one can see that they only cover less than 1 out every 220 of those uninsured Americans. Granted, not all of those 45.7 people have poor health but, according to figures based on our US Census Bureau, back in 2006 there were 34.2 million working-age Americans (that is, between18 and 64 years of age) with no health insurance. The kicker was that, about one out of every three are chronic cases (about 33%). So if we, conservatively, only consider working-age adults going back to 2006, we still have only one insured chronic patient for every 55 chronic victims who have no health insurance. 11.2 million more people would have to be added to these pools. Why haven’t they already done so? First off, typical premiums are more than double and still carry $10,000 deductibles. Who needs it?

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