Health Care Numbers

Obama has said that we have 30 million uninsured in this country.

"There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage."

"These are the facts. Nobody disputes them."

That was in his September address to Congress. Those "were the facts", and "nobody disputes them". Nobody accept Obama in August:

“I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today,” Obama said in his remarks at the beginning of the town hall meeting. “In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our ,fellow citizens have no coverage. They are just vulnerable.”

Nice to have all the facts! Especially when they seem to change from speech to speech.

The population of the United States is 308 million.

From Obama's speech:

"In just a two year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point."

Given our population, that would be close to 103,000,000 that go without health care coverage at some point over two years. That is a large number. I would like to see the statistics behind it.

From the Washington Post:

"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid presented an $848 billion health-care overhaul package on Wednesday that would extend coverage to 31 million Americans and reform insurance."

I am struck by the fact that out of the 30 million uninsured, Harry Reid will insure 31 million of them. His bill would cover 103% of the uninsured. Now that is what I call effective government.

"The bill would cover an additional 31 million people over the next decade. That would boost the percentage of nonelderly Americans with medical insurance from 83% to 94% over the next decade -- slightly less than the 96% who would be covered by the House bill."

It is obvious that Harry Reid isn't using the 30 million uninsured number that Obama rolled out before Congress and the American people. He is using the old 46 million uninsured number. Why do these people keep switching around the numbers?

Here is the source of the 46 million uninsured number:

In fact, the latest available government statistics on the number of uninsured in America comes from the Census Bureau’s “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007,” which is published every August. (The Census Bureau report that will estimate the number of uninsured in 2008 will be released later this month.)

The current report says that there were 35.920 million uninsured U.S. citizens and 9.737 million uninsured foreign nationals in the United States.

Table 6 on page 22 of the report says that in 2007 there were a total of 45.657 million uninsured people residing in the United States. The table provides a breakout on the demographics of these 45.657 uninsured, indicating that it includes 33.269 million native born citizens and 2.651 million naturalized citizens, for a total of 35.920 U.S. citizens who are uninsured.

The report also states there were also 9.737 million persons in the United States in 2007 who were “not a citizen” and who did not have health insurance.

The Senate plan by Harry Reid is going to cost 848 billion. And by their own admission, it is also going to leave 16 to 17 million people still uninsured.

From the LA Times:

"The bill would cover an additional 31 million people over the next decade. That would boost the percentage of nonelderly Americans with medical insurance from 83% to 94% over the next decade -- slightly less than the 96% who would be covered by the House bill."

If the 11% increase represents 31,000,000 people, the 6% left off represent almost 17,000,000 people by my math. Of course, that would leave us with 48 million uninsured, which is a new high. So maybe those pecentages have some rounding errors. Maybe the numbers are just fudged anyway.

I think all the numbers are bogus, but they do matter because they are used to push the government takeover.

Here is a breakdown of the uninsured by Keith Hennessey:



Also from Hennessey:

Let us walk through the graph from top to bottom.

There were 45.7 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2007.

• Of that amount, 6.4 million are the Medicaid undercount. These are people who are on one of two government health insurance programs, Medicaid or S-CHIP, but mistakenly (intentionally or not) tell the Census taker that they are uninsured. There is disagreement about the size of the Medicaid undercount. This figure is based on a 2005 analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services.

• Another 4.3 million are eligible for free or heavily subsidized government health insurance (again, either Medcaid or SCHIP), but have not yet signed up. While these people are not pre-enrolled in a health insurance program and are therefore counted as uninsured, if they were to go to an emergency room (or a free clinic), they would be automatically enrolled in that program by the provider after receiving medical care. There’s an interesting philosophical question that I will skip about whether they are, in fact, uninsured, if technically they are protected from risk.

• Another 9.3 million are non-citizens. I cannot break that down into documented vs. undocumented citizens.

• Another 10.1 million do not fit into any of the above categories, and they have incomes more than 3X the poverty level. For a single person that means their income exceeded $30,600 in 2007, when the median income for a single male was $33,200 and for a female, $21,000. For a family of four, if your income was more than 3X the poverty level in 2007, you had $62,000 of income or more, and you were above the national median.

• Of the remaining 15.6 million uninsured, 5 million are adults between ages 18 and 34 and without kids.

• The remaining 10.6 million do not fit into any of the above categories, so they are:

• U.S. citizens;

• with income below 300% of poverty;

• not on or eligible for a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance program;

• and not a childless adult between age 18 and 34.

Look at the breakdown above. Ask yourself the question, who will the 16-17 million uninsured be after this bill? And who does the bill actually insure?

You have 10.7 million who are already covered. Some are the Medicare undercount who don't realize that Medicare/Medicade already covers them. Some are people that are eligible but haven't signed up for the programs. It is easy to take credit for insuring these people, they already have the saftey net.

You have 10.1 million people that already live above 300% of the poverty line. Those people can afford to buy insurance and they will be forced to buy it under the new plan.

So in two easy steps it is easy to get to 20.8 million people. Surely all of those people will be "covered" in the new plan. They are the low hanging fruit.

Think about that. That is over 2/3rds of Harry Reid's 31 million people. He is going to insure 10.7 people that already have insurance. The cost to insure the already insured should be zero. Then he will mandate and force 10.1 million people that can afford it to buy insurance. The cost to force other people to buy insurance should be zero. That means he is only going to really pay to insure 10 million people, and he will be paying 848 billion dollars to do it. That comes in at $85,000 per head.

Is that what it comes down too? We are going to force 10.1 million people to buy overpriced insurance they don't want to buy. We are going to pay dearly to cover another 10 million people, while still leaving 16 million people uninsured. It seems like a really bad plan that won't really satisfy anyone. But at least it will cost a lot of money. Sphere: Related Content