According to some of the findings of the Zaniya Project, maybe a large segment of the uninsured can afford insurance...and just don't want it?
According to a chart on distribution of uninsured by income, the second largest income segment of uninsured is the "over $50,000" at 18.9%. When you look at "over $40,000" that figure becomes 27.9%.
So nearly 1/3 of the uninsured could probably afford insurance if they wanted it. And when you consider that only about 8% or 9% of South Dakotans are uninsured in the first place, this doesn't appear to be the huge problem it's made out to be.
Are there people who need help? Of course; there always will be people who are overwhelmed by medical bills.
Is it such a huge problem that we need to risk more government intervention, more taxes, more loss of freedom, more cost, and diminished quality? No.
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Monday, May 28, 2007
Can the Uninsured Afford Health Care?
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2 comments:
While I agree with you that we do not need more government involvement or taxes to deal with health care, I do want to point out the cost of insurance for my family. Because we have existing medical conditions, nothing serious but they are chronic, we cannot get insurance privately that would not put riders on all those conditions (and then we wouldn't need the insurance). So we must purchase the insurance through our business and pay for employees health insurance also. (The employee could get insurance at a cheaper rate, privately, which we would reimburse for, but then we would not have coverage for our family.) We pay over 10 thousand dollars a year for health insurance for our family, plus what we pay for employees. That is a big chunk out of a 40-thousand dollar income.
So can we afford it, yes, obviously we do, but does there need to be some kind of reform? Yes! I do not have the answer to exactly how, other than to know government is NOT going to make it better.
Dawn
I sympathize, and agree that something needs to be done, Dawn. Sounds like you have the right perspective on it that more gov't isn't the answer.
More gov't has a lot to do with what has sent medical costs over the moon. I just fear that, since the prevailing mood among many is that gov't has all the answers, they're going to make things worse instead of better.
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