Oct 082010
 
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Dr. Sara R. Collins in November of 2007 mentioned the following in her testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives:

  • “With their high premiums and underwriting, individual insurance plans which cover just 6 percent of the under-65 population have proven to be an inadequate substitute for employer group coverage.”
  • “More than two-thirds (67%) of adults under age 65 who do not have health insurance are in families where at least one member works full time.”
  • “In 2005, 53 percent of people with incomes less than $20,000, and 41 percent of people in households with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000, reported a time when they were uninsured in the prior year.”
  • “More than 13 million young adults ages 19 to 29 are uninsured, the fastest growing age group among the uninsured population.”
  • “Sixty-two percent of working-age Hispanics and 33 percent of African Americans were uninsured for some time during 2005, compared with 20 percent of whites in the same age group.”
  • “Medical debt forces families to make stark tradeoffs. For example, 40 percent of uninsured adults with medical bill problems were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, or rent, and nearly 50 percent had used all their savings to pay their bills.”
  • “The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 avoidable deaths occur each year in the U.S. as a direct result of individuals being uninsured”
  • “people without health insurance collectively lose between $65 billion and $130 billion a year in lost productivity and earnings”

To read the entire testimony, click on Congressional Testimony–Widening Gaps in Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: The Need for Universal Coverage. To see how the U.S. Health Care System ranks against other countries, click on U.S. Health Care Ranking Compared to Other Countries.

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