Not Covering The Uninsured, By The Numbers
Not Covering The Uninsured, By The Numbers
In honor of Cover the Uninsured Week:
Number of currently uninsured Americans: 45 million
Number of working Americans with no health insurance: 20 million
Percent of uninsured Americans unable to see a doctor when they needed to in 12 month period: 41
Average cost of visit to hospital for Americans with no health insurance: $1,000
Amount the U.S. loses per year on “uncompensated” care for people with no insurance: $41 billion
Cuts in Medicaid passed by Congress last week, over five years: $10 billion
Percent of uninsured Americans who would benefit from President Bush’s proposed Health Savings Accounts: 0.3
Percent of U.S. adults who cite lowering health care costs and health insurance as a top priority for the president and Congress: 63
Percent of Americans who say health care is the “single most important issue” for Congress to address in 2005: 10
Percent who say Social Security is the “single most important issue”: 2
Speeches President Bush and Vice President Cheney have given on health care this week: 0
Speeches they’ve given on Social Security: 4
Number of times the words “health care” or “uninsured” appear in transcripts of White House press gaggles this week: 0
Days since President Bush spoke about the issue of health care: 96
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So the past 60 days we’ve had upteen events on Social Security and zero on Health Care. The sad thing is Social Security is fine until 2042, healthcare is a crisis NOW.
May 4th, 2005 at 4:09 pmIf only there were some way the GOP contributers could make megabucks off a health care system better than we have now, we would have heard a lot of talk about it from Bush. Never forget that the Republican Party only exists to make money for their contributers.
May 4th, 2005 at 4:35 pmBush doesn’t talk about health care because he doesn’t CARE. He can’t even muster up fake feelings about this issue. Worst president ever…
May 4th, 2005 at 5:18 pmTo think my ENTIRE extended family voted for him — both times! Poor me, I’m blue in a red state. I’m going to take a nap…maybe it’s all been a dream… Yeah, that’s the ticket…
May 4th, 2005 at 5:20 pmIt won’t be long before the Fox News headline reads, “Blame liberals for the poor state of health care”
May 4th, 2005 at 5:33 pmNeed even more info?
A 28 page PDF that explains in detail
Myths and Memes About Single-Payer Health Insurance in America:
A Rebuttal to Conservative Claims.
Keep in mind that we are the only OECD (industrialized) nation lacking national health care. On the remaining 29 OECD nations, 28 have single payer universal health care systems; 1, Germany, has a multi-payer system.
Yet the United States spends substantially more on health care than any other nation without providing more services.
We can do better.
We could put in a system that works better and would offer more value per dollar: that’s economic sense.
Want the short case for a single payer system, and some common myths rebutted?
Don’t believe the neo-con hype. & stop protecting–under the guise of economic sense–the very institutions that exist as parasites upon both taxpayer dollars and our national health.
May 4th, 2005 at 5:55 pmYup, I’m actually going through the pain of being an uninsured American. I have a few cavities; I’m going to a local dentist’s college. It’s insane. Four hours for a cleaning. Four hours to fill a cavity. Somehow though, I know I’m one of the lucky ones because I have this low-cost option.
I’m also a writer. I’ve pitched an article about my experience to a few online zines. Yet I haven’t heard from anyone. I just feel that there is no interest to talk about the topic of uninsured Americans. I feel very frustrated.
May 4th, 2005 at 5:59 pmCover the Uninsured Week
May 4th, 2005 at 6:45 pmSome interesting stats on healthcare and the uninsured from Think Progress.
If the uninsured people of this country want to have their concerns recognized, they need to start pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into their local lobbyists and politicians. Until then, sorry folks, insurance companies have better lobbyists than you do.
May 5th, 2005 at 2:30 amThank you, values voters. Enjoy your “smaller” government. You voted for it.
I think it was the Clinton campaign that said something like, when Republicans do nothing about a problem, it’s bad, but when they do something about it, it’s even worse. We may actually be better off. If they did address health care it would be something like making it impossible to sue doctors or forbidding hospitals from treating any patient who can’t pay in advance.
May 5th, 2005 at 11:31 amuk keno
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October 20th, 2005 at 5:01 amIt is very hard to tell the difference between a fake blog and a real blog until you read it for a while
and realize there’s no human brain behind it, like one of those Jack Format radio stations that fired
all their DJs, or maybe FEMA
December 10th, 2005 at 9:29 amPoliphonyc ringtones.Mobile phone
Free mobile phone
I didn’t give President Clinton enough credit when he had Hillary address the national healthcare issue back in the 90’s. The fact that US companies must bear the cost of American workers’ healthcare is a big disadvantage to American businesses. GM is a great example. After noting that GM spends more on healthcare than it does on steel, a television commentator quipped that GM is like a healthcare company that just happens to build cars. I read that GM will spend more than $5.6 billion this year on health coverage for 1.1 million people (only about 160,000 of these are current employees).
GM is the posterchild for what is wrong with the American healthcare system. It doesn’t appear that America’s Republican majority plans to do anything about it. The Republicans seem to think that everything can be fixed with tax cuts for the rich: you know, “trickle down economics.” Yeah, right… many of these RICH Americans are outsourcing call center jobs to India, hiring illegal alines from Mexico, and sending skilled manufacturing jobs to China and Taiwan. Meanwhile, the “Red State Republicans” that tend to be most affected by these ridiculous policies keep voting these guys into office.
Forget Social Security, healthcare is America’s biggest problem. We’re not losing jobs in the States due to Social Security, but we are losing them due to ever-increasing healthcare costs. It’s funny, but I wonder if the CEO of GM that screams about spiraling healthcare costs voted Republican or Democrat last November.
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January 18th, 2006 at 3:14 amIf the republicans are at fault for the health care “crisis” (I love how everything is a crisis on the left) then why didn’t Clinton fix it? Why is there a crisis anyways when this is a built upon the backbone laid by 40 years of democratic control?
November 9th, 2006 at 11:29 pm