The U.S. Census Bureau reported on Tuesday that the number of Americans without health insurance grew to an all time high of 47 million people last year. That is a sharp increase of more than two million people from 2005. The number of children without health coverage also rose. With health care already heating up as a political issue, the new figures are likely to further raise the stakes in the debate.
Among the 1.8 million uninsured veterans, 12.7 percent are under 65. In addition, the number of uninsured veterans has increased by 290,000 between 2000 and 2004, according to the report in the Oct. 30 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, says the increase in the number of uninsured is not hard to explain. The average family’s income is rising slowly, if at all, while the cost of their employer-sponsored health insurance premiums is going up much faster.
The Bush Administration has been sending Americans overseas asking them to fight for their country, and yet, when people come home, they have no guarantee of health care,” said study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program. “The most basic human right of health care is being denied to our veterans, along with other Americans — and that’s a disgrace.
I think citizens of a country deserve access to health care. Watch the movie ‘Sicko’. Just see how many people lose lives because of inadequate health insurance coverage.
What does this mean?
Sources say that new census numbers will actually prompt the next president and the new Congress to fix the health insurance problem. Fuel has been added to the fire but the problem is the fire has been burning for decades. In other words, all talk and no action. That is what happened in the 1990s, the last time health care was a major issue in the presidential campaign.
Via yahoo news
