Several blogs have highlighted UnitedHealth Group’s new ‘Continuity’ insurance plan, a “first of its kind” product that gives consumers “the right to buy an individual health policy at some point in the future even if you become sick.” As Stand Up For Health Care explains:

To be clear, the product is not health insurance. It’s more like a bribe. You’d be paying the insurance company now – 20 percent of the annual premium, at that – just for the right to purchase their policy later, if you lost your job or retired early, for example.

Sound like a great deal? Well, no. But it’s actually even worse than it sounds at first. If you’re sick and need to be sure you have coverage, you probably can’t buy this plan. And if you’re healthy enough to buy it, but get sick later, you may not be able to afford it when you need it.

Not only does the plan — open only to the healthiest Americans — not guarantee affordable coverage in the future, it exploits the country’s anxiety over access to affordable health care to convince consumers to buy a completely unnecessary product. Smart marketing for the company, but a bad investment for anyone looking to guarantee access to affordable coverage in the future.

In fact, under current COBRA and HIPAA laws, most individuals with “credible coverage” are protected from instantly losing health insurance coverage when they change or lose their jobs, regardless of preexisting conditions. COBRA allows individuals previously employed by a firm with 20 or more full-time employees on the payroll to receive health care benefits for 18 to 36 months, provided they pay the full cost of the premium and administrative fees.

Similarly, HIPAA guarantees that individuals can purchase coverage in the individual market if they have had “creditable coverage” in the group market. For consumers in the individual market, HIPAA requires guaranteed renewability of coverage in most situations. “This means that an insurance issuer must renew an individual’s policy regardless of the individual’s health status unless the individual no longer wants it.”

There is some uncertainty in the current system and UnitedHealth Group is trying confuse consumers by offering protections that are already available. But as the NYT points out, ‘Continuity’ may become even more obsolete if Congress adopts comprehensive health care reform. “As an individual, you’re betting against health reform.”

In a recent interview with Tufts Daily — “the independent student newspaper of Tufts University” — former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) disputed that 47 million Americans lack health insurance coverage:

Where do you get the number 47 million? When you watch CBS, they may tell you that number. However, 11 million of that total are illegal immigrants. Ten million more are people who can buy their own insurance. Finally, another 10 million are people your own age who think they are never going to get sick or hurt and are not vulnerable. However, we do have a lot of people that need insurance, and we need to take care of it. I am working now with the same group I mentioned above to have a bipartisan solution to health care. The plan needs to be as universal as possible, and affordable. In addition, it has to be available. We need a way of solving this, without the government doing it all.

Fourteen years after denying the crisis and stonewalling comprehensive health care reform, Dole is still trying to downplay the problem of the uninsured. In fact, Dole’s suggestion that more than half of the uninsured lack insurance because they are either illegal immigrants, young people, or or ‘believe they are never going to get sick or hurt’ deeply misrepresents the crisis.

In fact, most people lack insurance because they can’t afford it. A new report by Families USA found that since 2000, the average cost of family coverage increased by 78%, from $6,672 to $12,078 in 2007, while wages only increased by 15% over this same seven-year period.

As premium growth outpaces wage growth, the nearly two-thirds of the uninsured who are poor or nearly poor, are having difficulty finding affordable coverage. “What the numbers seem to be showing is the slow fraying of the employment-based system, and the fundamental bedrock issue is that insurance is increasingly unaffordable, just not affordable for average working people,” Drew Altman, the president and chief executive officer of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation says.

Despite Dole’s suggestion, immigrants are also not the primary factor driving the uninsured problem. While “non-citizens are much more likely to be uninsured than citizens” because of limited access to employer based health care coverage and restrictions for public coverage, citizens still make up “the bulk of the uninsured (78%)“:

Further, the majority (76%-80%) of the growth in the number of uninsured from 2000 to 2006 occurred among citizens, not legal and undocumented non-citizens.

Last year, the Economic Policy Institute released a graph illustrating this very point. Even if immigration was frozen at the 2000 level, the country would have still experienced an increase in the number of uninsured:

Understating the breadth of the crisis will not bring down the costs of insurance. Uncompensated care for the uninsured contributes an average $922 to family health insurance premiums, and the growing number of Americans skipping preventive care and doctors visits only adds to the countries health care tab (in the form of more expensive chronic disease management etc…). Currently, health care spending makes up “$1 out of every $6 in the economy, dwarfing automobiles and all other economic segments” and represents the “single most important factor influencing the Federal Government’s long-term fiscal balance.”

Denying the problem, is no longer an option.