Health Insurance and the Uninsured

Given the fact there are millions of Americans around without health insurance, it should come as no surprise that politicians are trying to remedy that situation.

When consumers turn to 2insure4less.com for their health insurance needs, they not only get quality health insurance quotes, but they also educate themselves on how to go about buying health insurance and ways to save money on it.

According to recently released research from the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., if the health care reform were fully implemented in 2011, the country’s uninsured rate would fall more than 10 percentage points. That would translate into approximately 28 million non-elderly U.S. residents receiving coverage.

The research estimates the 2011 implementation of the law would drop the figure of uninsured younger than 65 to 23.2 million from nearly 51 million. In relation to that, the uninsured rate would dip to 8.7 percent from nearly 19 percent.

Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will have the biggest impact in decreasing the number of uninsured increasing the Medicaid program and offering federal premium subsidies for the lower-income uninsured. Those provisions are set to take effect in 2014.

The analysis goes on to note that while the non-elderly uninsured rate would fall in all 50 states, it would differ widely.

As an example, the uninsured rate in Texas, which the Urban Institute believes to be 29.7 percent – the country’s largest, would dip to 12.8 percent, while the uninsured rate in New Mexico would decline to 12 percent from 28 percent.

On the flip side, analysts believe the health care reform law would have a minor impact on the uninsured rate in Massachusetts, where legislation from 2006 already has garnered near-universal coverage.

According to the analysis, the percentage of Massachusetts residents younger than 65 not having coverage would be just under 3% with full implementation of the federal reform law in 2011. That figure would be just a small drop from the present uninsured rate, which analysts believe to be around 4%.

In other parts of the country, the uninsured rate would dip by relatively small percentages. For example, Hawaii would drop to 4.8% from 9.5%, while Iowa would fall to 6.6% from 11.3%.