Uninsured deserve health care coverage
Lynchburg News and Advance
Friday, March 14, 2003Nearly 15 million Virginians are uninsured for health care benefits.
But don’t assume they’re slouches. In fact, 67 percent of those who don’t have accident or health care insurance work full time; 10 percent work part time. Nearly half of them have household incomes of $30,000 a year or higher.
The problem is 70 percent of them are not offered health insurance at work and the other 30 percent can’t afford it.
This startling snapshot of Virginia’s uninsured is being circulated this week by the Virginia Health Care Foundation in support of national “Cover the Uninsured Week.”
About 75 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point during 2001 or 2002, according to the analysis of U.S. Census data by Families USA.
Typically, the number of uninsured Americans is reported at about 41 million — but the figure is much larger when a longer time span is examined and when people who are uninsured for only a fraction of the period are counted.
While the elderly are covered by Medicare, nearly one in three people under age 65 went without health insurance at some point during 2001-2002. Ninety percent of them were uninsured for at least three months, and about 80 percent were in working families.
Studies have repeatedly found that people without health insurance are less likely to see doctors and more likely to be diagnosed with illnesses late — at great personal cost. That cost is then spread to everyone else in the form of higher premiums because health care providers are forced to absorb the cost of providing for the uninsured.Many Virginians are lucky to have free clinics and free prescription drugs through programs supported by the Virginia Health Care Foundation, a public-private partnership that has furnished seed money and technical assistance to more than 170 local health initiatives.
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