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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (52985)	8/7/2004 12:39:54 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

9 million lost health coverage since 2001, study says Only public programs like Medicaid keep ranks of uninsured from soaring, authors say. Poor and Latinos affected the most. By MSN Money staff The number of Americans with employer-paid health coverage fell dramatically from 2001 to 2003, with about 9 million people losing coverage, according to a national study released Aug. 2. The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) said the proportion of Americans under 65 with employer coverage fell from 67% in 2001 to 63% in 2003. The center is a nonpartisan research group funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Public programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program took up the slack, preventing a big increase in the number of uninsured. "Clearly, public insurance expansions provided a safety net for millions of people -- especially children -- who otherwise probably would have lost coverage as the country moved through a recession and jobless recovery," said Paul B. Ginsburg, Ph.D., president of HSC.Those public programs saw almost 5 million low-income children added to their rolls from 2001 to 2003, HSC said. 43 million completely without coverage Because of the recession, there was a notable drop in the proportion of the U.S. population in a family with at least one worker: 84.2% of the under-65 population was in a working family in 2001 compared with 81.4% in 2003, according to the HSC study. "While the economic downturn reduced employment and accounted for much of the decline in employer coverage, the rapidly rising cost of health insurance, which increased about 28% between 2001 and 2003, likely contributed to the decline as well," said HSC health researcher Bradley C. Strunk, who co-authored the study with HSC senior health researcher James D. Reschovsky. Latinos were the least likely to have employer coverage and the most likely to be uninsured. Employer coverage for Latinos declined from 46.7% in 2001 to 39.7% in 2003. During the same period, public insurance enrollment among Latinos increased from 15.3% to 22.1%. Whites also experienced offsetting changes in employer coverage and public insurance program enrollment, with employer coverage declining from 73.3% to 71.3% as public coverage increased from 5.7% to 7.9% between 2001 and 2003. Trends for blacks were not statistically significant: 51.3% of blacks in 2003 had employer coverage, 21.5% had public coverage and 17.9% were uninsured. Employer-paid coverage for the poorest families -- those families of four making $36,800 a year or less -- fell to 32.5% from 37.4% from 2001 to 2003. But the percentage enrolled in public insurance programs leaped from 37.9% to 49.3% in that time. As private insurance is expected to continue its decline, government coverage can't be counted on to provide a safety net in the future, the authors noted. At present, about 43 million Americans have no health insurance coverage, either public or private. http:/moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/Insureyourhealth/P91042.asp