Cover the Uninsured Week

May 13th, 2004 by Julie Ferguson

Thanks to Ross at The Bloviator for informing us that we are midway into the Cover the Uninsured Week, and that more than 20 million workers lack health insurance.

Ross provides a link to a 57-page state-by-state analysis of Americans without health insurance (PDF) commissioned by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and conducted by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center located at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. It uses data from the CDC’s 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Pages 23 through 36 provide state-by-state tables on uninsured rates for adults, comparisons of the uninsured by ethnicity, rates of both insured and uninsured who do not have a personal doctor or health care provider, and other important data. Texas has the dubious distinction of leading the nation with 27% uninsured working adults.

In conjunction with the week’s activities, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study that examines the cost of medical care for the uninsured and how much care they receive compared to fully insured people.

The study reports:
“Uninsured Americans could incur nearly $41 billion in uncompensated health care treatment in 2004, with federal, state and local governments paying as much as 85 percent of the care, according to a new Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) study. Even with uncompensated care, the study shows that people uninsured for the entire year can expect to receive about half as much care as people fully insured.
“Another major finding of the study, authored by Urban Institute researchers Jack Hadley and John Holahan, is that if the country provided coverage to all the uninsured, the cost of additional medical care provided to the newly insured would be $48 billion – an increase of 0.4 percent in health spending

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