Democrats Misuse Statistics about the of Uninsured
Democrats Misuse Statistics about the Number of Uninsured
Democrats routinely and grossly misuse statistics and “statistics” about the number of uninsured in the U.S. is no exception. They do this, of course, to push for greater government involvement in health care — see Conservative Denialism And The Uninsured:
One tactic frequently used by the right to justify opposition to solving problems is to distort the facts to claim the problem does not exist. This is seen on a variety of issues from global warming to health care. They often down play the seriousness of having tens of millions who are uninsured or under-insured by giving false accounts of these numbers, with these distortions frequently repeated on conservative blogs.
Scores of well-designed studies have shown that uninsured people are more likely than insured people to die prematurely, to have their cancers diagnosed too late, or to die from heart failure, a heart attack, a stroke or a severe injury. The Institute of Medicine estimated in 2004 that perhaps 18,000 deaths a year among adults could be attributed to lack of insurance.
The oft-voiced suggestion that the uninsured can always go to an emergency room also badly misunderstands what is happening. By the time they do go, many of these people are much sicker than they would have been had insurance given them access to routine and preventive care.
So how many uninsured people are out there, facing those risks? The most frequently cited estimate, 45.7 million in 2007, comes from an annual census survey. That number was down slightly from the year before, but given the financial crisis, it is almost certainly rising again.
Breaking The Uninsured Numbers Down
Voluntarily uninsured. A closer look at the 2006 census survey shows that almost 18 million of the uninsured make more than $50,000 a year. And almost 10 million of them have an income of more than $75,000 a year. In other words, 38 percent of the U.S. uninsured population earn more than $50,000 per year.
Democratic critics of this statistic correctly point out that many of these people live in “households” that are groups of low-wage roommates or extended families living together. Their combined incomes may reach $50,000 — $75,000, but they cannot pool their resources to buy an insurance policy to cover the whole group. The exact percentage of the 18 million who are in such groups isn’t known (or at least I can find it), but I suspect (until proven otherwise) that such individuals are unlikely to comprise a significant percentage (e.g., 25–33%) of the total. But for argument’s sake, let’s assume a percentage of 25% (i.e., about 4.5 million), so that leaves 13.5 million “voluntarily uninsured.”
Uninsured non-citizens. The 45.7 million “Americans” include large numbers of non-citizens who replied to the Census Bureau survey. In fact, the Census Bureau’s breakout shows that more than 10 million of the people considered uninsured by the U.S. government aren’t U.S. citizens at all. Since no version of the current health care reforms on the table will insure non-citizens, we can subtract 10 million from the 45.7 million leaving 35.7 million citizens uninsured at any one time. 13.5 million are “voluntarily uninsured,” so that leaves 22.2 million “involuntarily uninsured” at any given time.
The Working Poor. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 80 percent of the uninsured come from families with full-time or part-time workers. They often cannot get coverage at work or find it too expensive to buy. “They surely deserve a helping hand” intones the NYTimes (The Uninsured).
Well, in fact, they do have a helping hand: The United States government already offers many in this very group a big hand up. As many as 14 million of the 45.7 million uninsured— poor and low-income Americans—are fully eligible for generous government assistance programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. The problem is, they’re just not enrolling in these programs.
You may think that a poor single mom with three children living in South Central Los Angeles is among the uninsured, but in fact, she is eligible for Medicaid, as are her children.… Because Medicaid and children’s health programs allow patients to be signed up literally in the [emergency room], these individuals could be covered; they just choose not to do the paperwork. (David Gratzer, “What Health Insurance Crisis?” Los Angeles Times,August 29, 2004).
As it turns out, a 2008 study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute shows that a whopping 70 percent of uninsured children are eligible for either Medicaid, SCHIP, or both programs (Reaching Eligible but Uninsured Children in Medicaid and SCHIP, Washington DC: Georgetown University Health Policy Institute,Center for Children and Families, March, 2008).
In justifying his national health care plan, Barack Obama often complains that “nearly eight million children” lack health insurance. What he doesn’t tell you is that six million of those children are currently uninsured for no reason other than the fact that they have not been enrolled in available programs.
For far too many liberals, the issue of people who fall through the cracks of existing programs that supposedly already entitle them to health insurance is an unacknowledged problem — unacknowledged perhaps, because there’s no easy government solution. As Sally Pipes points out in The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care:
Can we really argue that such people don’t have health insurance? Have we reached a state where the government has to force people to show up for a free lunch? If 14 million eligibles aren’t availing themselves of taxpayerfunded coverage, then why should we think that a still bigger government health care bureaucracy will solve the problem?
Who’s left? | Democratics Ignore the Hopelessly Uninsured Costing Lives
Okay. So there are supposedly 45.7 million uninsured.
But 13.5 million earn $50,000 — $75,00, more than enough to pay for basic insurance.
More than 10 million aren’t U.S. citizens.
And as many as 14 million qualify for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. Obviously, there’s some overlap in these numbers. But the critical question is—who’s left over? Assuming no overlap, I come up with about 8.2 million hopelessly uninsured. I’m not sure how to estimate the overlap, but with overlap, let’s assume 12–14 million hopelessly uninsured.
So these are people who really do fall through the cracks. These are the chronically uninsured working poor. They are people who hold down jobs and struggle to support families. They earn less than $50,000 per year, but too much to qualify for government help. And because insurance is so expensive, they simply can’t afford it, and they really do need help:
Scores of well-designed studies have shown that uninsured people are more likely than insured people to die prematurely, to have their cancers diagnosed too late, or to die from heart failure, a heart attack, a stroke or a severe injury. The Institute of Medicine estimated in 2004 that perhaps 18,000 deaths a year among adults could be attributed to lack of insurance. (The Uninsured).
So what do leading so called “advocates” of the uninsured propose? They propose more government involvement in a hasty and ill conceived health care reform bill that would not only FAIL to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare, but the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured, 14 million of which fail to take advantage of existing programs.
Any real honest attempt to solve the uninsured problem would focus on this narrow slice of the 45.7-million pie, the roughly 12–14 million hopelessly uninsured, a much easier problem to solve, and one that would have a much better chance at controlling cost.
But no — liberal ideology is at stake. Health care is “right,” and the top priority is getting government involved in health care as much as possible, ideally to the exclusion of all private options (note that the CBO concludes that the current “public plan” as is would not kill the private insurance market, so the goal of an total government takeover of health care will have to wait). Democratics could advocate directly for the 12–14 million hopelessly uninsured, the 18,000 deaths a year attributed to lack of insurance, but they don’t.
Why not? Because that’s not really the point and focus of liberal health care reform —it’s not primarily about lives, it’s about a strategy to get to a single payer system, by hook or by crook. That’s what’s at stake:
A BIG Hat Tip to Sally C. Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute for supplying all of the research sources used in this post. Be sure to check out her terrific book, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.
The Real Goal of Democratic Health Care Reform
See also:
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