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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ColtonGang who wrote (1001)	9/29/2000 6:42:44 AM
From: ColtonGang	Respond to of 10042

The Census Bureau reported that the numbers without insurance fell in 1999. Still, 42.6 million were uninsured. By Tony Pugh INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - For the first time in 13 years, the number and percentage of Americans without health insurance declined in 1999 as a strong economy and an expansive job market helped more people get coverage through their employers. The number of uninsured Americans fell last year to 42.6 million (15.5 percent of the total population) from 44.3 million (16.3 percent) in 1998, according to a new Census Bureau report released yesterday. About 900,000 of the 1.7 million who gained coverage last year were children under 18. The decline in uninsured Americans is the first since the Census Bureau began measuring the trend in 1987. Not all the news from the annual report was good, however. Last year, although the poverty rate fell to its lowest point in 21 years, about 10.4 million people - 32.4 percent of the population living below the poverty line - still had no health insurance, the same number as in 1998. In addition, 13.9 percent of all children under 17 still had no coverage. Mirroring the national trend, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware each saw the number of uninsured decrease between 1997 and last year. But New Jersey stood out, adding enough employment to place among the 15 states with a significant drop in the last two years, from 16.5 percent uninsured to 13.4 percent. Pennsylvania's proportion of uninsured people dipped from 10.1 percent to 9.4 percent. Although the figures statistically are equal because of the margin of sampling error, the state was ranked among those with the lowest proportion of uninsured people. Angela Yarbrough, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Insurance, said she had not seen the census figures. But she said the state had achieved its ranking in part because of its Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which has been in existence since 1993, longer than the three-year-old federal system of the same name. CHIP covers about 100,000 Pennsylvania children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford health insurance. That number of children insured is an increase of 135 percent since 1995, she said. Delaware also saw a decrease, from 13.1 percent uninsured to 11.4 percent. The proportion of minorities and foreign-born citizens with no insurance remained much higher than that of non-Hispanic whites, according to census data. The percentage of African Americans without health insurance declined to 21.2 percent last year from 22.2 percent in 1998, and the number of Hispanics without coverage fell to 33.4 percent in 1999 from 35.3 percent in 1998. Only 11 percent of non-Hispanic whites lacked health insurance last year. Health-care advocates welcomed the census figures but said there was no cause to celebrate with 42 million Americans still without insurance at a time of unmatched prosperity. Experts say that despite rising health-care costs, a tight labor pool has forced employers to offer health insurance to attract workers and retain old ones. About 63 percent of Americans had job-based health coverage in 1999, the report showed. In 1998, only 54 percent of firms with fewer than 200 employees offered health insurance, according to a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That number has grown to 67 percent in 2000. And 60 percent of companies with three to nine employees offered health plans this year, compared with 49 percent two years ago. Among children under 17, 69 percent were covered by employment-based or private insurance last year, and 20 percent were covered by Medicaid, the federal insurance plan for the poor. Experts said the federal Children's Health Insurance Program also contributed, providing coverage for two million children. Health-insurance premiums increased 8.3 percent last year, however, and are likely to rise again next year, according to the Kaiser survey. Thus, some analysts said, the number of uninsured Americans may start to increase again. "A lot of this is really being driven by the economic boom, so if the economy slows down and premiums increase, this could turn around pretty quickly," said John Holahan, director of health policy research at the Urban Institute. Prescription-drug coverage for older Americans and managed-care reform have been the dominant health-care issues in the presidential campaign. But both major-party candidates also have offered proposals to assist the uninsured. Vice President Gore has called for universal coverage for children by 2005 by expanding eligibility requirements under the Children's Health Insurance Program. Gore also supports a tax credit equal to 25 percent of a household's health-insurance costs. Texas Gov. George W. Bush supports a tax credit of up to $1,000 per person or $2,000 per family to help cover private insurance costs for low-income workers with no employer-based coverage. Tony Pugh's e-mail address is tpugh@krwashington.com Inquirer staff writer Tom Ginsberg contributed to this article.