Commonwealth Report Shows Why ObamaCare Is Not Needed
The Commonwealth report’s most revealing evidence comes in Exhibit 2, reproduced below. According to Commonwealth’s own survey data, fewer than one in 10 (9 percent) of Americans were always uninsured during the period 2011-2012. Among adults with incomes above 133 percent of the poverty level (just under $15,000 for a single person), only one in 20 (5 percent) Americans lacked health insurance for all of 2011 and 2012. (Chris Jacobs)
“During a two-year period following the most severe economic downturn in generations, fewer than one in 10 Americans consistently lacked health insurance coverage. And some portion of that 9 percent consists of non-citizens, who are ineligible for most taxpayer-funded assistance programs anyway.”
Certainly not the picture that was painted for us four years ago!
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According to Gallup, in 2008, Healthcare was only voted by 9% of Americans as the MIP facing our country. Yet, Obama continually expressed how it was such a pressing issue. We elect public officals in order to represent ourselves. His Obamacare campaign only represents his own self-interests.
And there will still be about 31 million uncovered!
10% of the US population is way too much.
Many people are voluntarily uninsured. Sometimes the cost is not worth the benefit. Having zero uninsured probably isn’t a good thing.
Interesting take.
It goes to show how little, if any, positive effect this law has and will continue to have in Americans’ lives.
For those who haven’t realized that yet..
“,if any” being the key phrase there
The Commonwealth Fund peddles advocacy masquerading as research. I’ve heard their authors write their conclusions first.
I think Bubba is on to something
When the people were off and then on health insurance did all of them have pre-exisiting conditions covered?
John’s headline is somewhat misleading, in this sense:
Vast sections of the ACA have nothing to do with the uninsured. Instead there is a great effort to regulate the insurance which people do have, the deductibles and out of pocket limits and preventive care coverage especially.
Some of the new regulations will have ugly unintended consequences, but that would be the subject of a separate post.
To some extent, the uninsured are not a problem when they are healthy. They get up, go to work, and actually save money by not having health insurance.
There are however two problems regarding the uninsured:
a. They will postpone going to the doctor when there are early symptoms of disease.
b. They will have car accidents and broken legs and heart attacks, and show up at the hospital.
I do not know how to solve item (a) without some kind of free National Health Service. Which is not a bad idea but a daunting project in a nation of our size.
The solution to item (b) is simple in my book. The uninsured would pay an extra income tax. That tax money would go over to Medicare, which would be the payor of last resort for unavoidable hospitalizations. There would be a large deductible before Medicare kicked in.
Dr Goodman proposed a version of this several years ago.
Bob Hertz, The Health Care Crusade
Should we not advocate a program to educate people, especially those who don’t have insurance, that there are alternatives to going to the ER when they wake up with a cold?
Sure this is a bit of an overstatement, but I believe that there are a great deal of people going to the county hospital emergency rooms for no good reasons.
We don’t need an education campaign, simple incentives will suffice. We just need to stop dampening or misdirecting the cost.