Health Insurance Dilemma Continues for Many Americans

With budgets tightened even further in recent years due to the struggling economy, it comes as no surprise that close to 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least a portion of 2010, many of them suffering from conditions or diseases that required treatment, according to federal health officials.

Officials noted that 4 million additional Americans were not covered in the first portion of 2010 than during the same time two years earlier.

According to a CDC spokesperson, both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade.

The recent report has implications for U.S. healthcare reform efforts. The health care reform bill passed in March of 2010 promises to put in place health insurance coverage for 32 million Americans who presently go uncovered.

Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives recently, however, are determined to turn back the new law by derailing funds for it, with some even wanting to repeal it. Experts on both sides of the aisle expect gridlock in Congress for the next two years in putting in place healthcare reform provisions.

Prior to the healthcare reform act, Congress said yes to provisions expanding free health coverage for children. The CDC spokesperson added that “As private insurance coverage fell, the safety net protected children, but did not adequately protect adults.”

According to CDC, nine percent of adults lost private insurance, and public insurance secured only 5 percent of them. The CDC reports at this time that 22 percent of adults in the age range of 18-64 are uninsured.

Further analysis reported that in Q1 2010, approximately 59.1 million individuals had no health insurance for at least a portion of the year, a jump from 58.7 million the previous year and 56.4 million in 2008. More than 80 percent in that 59.1 million people figure were ages 18 to 64.

The CDC notes more individuals also went for a year or longer without health insurance; 27.5 million in 2008 to 30.4 million in Q1 of 2010. That figure was an increase of 3 million in chronically uninsured adults.

According to the CDC spokesperson, that data allows experts to debunk a pair of myths regarding health coverage.

First is the belief that it is only the poor who go without insurance.

As it stands, half of the uninsured are past the poverty level and one in three adults under 65 in the middle income range, defined arbitrarily here between $44,000 and $65,000 a year for a family of four, were uninsured at some point in 2010.

Secondly, many individuals argue that only those who are healthy risk going without health insurance.

As it turns out, more than two out of five people who are uninsured at some time during the past year had one or additional chronic disease and this is based on only a partial list of chronic diseases.

For example, 15 million of the individuals who went minus health insurance had high blood pressure, asthma or diabetes.

Individuals with such conditions oftentimes end up in emergency rooms and necessitate treatment, paid for by hospitals or a taxpayer that is much costlier than receiving proper preventive care would have been.