Who needs health Insurance most and doesn't have it?

[FrenchieCat]

Who dies early from so many preventable deseases?

Here is an article by Ron Brownstein,
not someone I "Like" much at all,
but still he speaks some statistical facts,
and discusses the blind spot that some may have here at DU.
Ideologically, Those who can appreciate the lives of Afghans in Afghanistans,
and the lives of soldiers fighting, but not necessarily the 30 million
Americans who would be helped by the HCR bill that is currently waiting
to pass to go to conference, many of them minorities.

***
The latest annual Census Bureau figures show that in 2008 just 5.96 percent of college-educated whites lacked health insurance. For whites without a college education, the share without insurance jumps to 14.5 percent (the number is surely higher for non-college whites who are not union members). Among African-Americans, the share of those without insurance rises to 19.1 percent. Among Hispanics, the share of those without insurance soars to a daunting 30.7 percent, the Census found.

In his Washington Post op-ed Thursday, Dean wrote: "I know health care reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill." Yet the bill that Dean so casually dismisses would spend, according to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly $200 billion annually once it is fully phased in to help subsidize insurance coverage for over 30 million Americans now without it. That's real money--the most ambitious and generous expansion of the public safety net since the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson. And that money, based on the Census results, would flow most into minority and working-class white communities.

Minorities don't seem to have much doubt about their investment in this debate. In November's Kaiser Family Foundation health care tracking poll, two-thirds of non-white Americans said that their family would be better off if health care reform passes. Though the evidence suggests that non-college whites could also receive a disproportionate share of the bill's spending (since they constitute more of the uninsured), they are dubious: just one-third of them believe they would be better off, a reflection of the mounting skepticism about government such blue-collar whites are expressing across the board. Yet the most skeptical group is the college-educated whites, the same constituency that has the most access to health insurance today: only about one-fourth of them expect to be better off under reform...

...The broad mass of college-educated white voters are an increasingly central component of the Democratic coalition. But it remains a challenge for the party to manage the expectations of that community's most liberal segments because they tend to see politics less as a means of tangibly improving their own lives than as an opportunity to make a statement about the kind of society they want America to be. That is not a perspective that encourages compromise or pragmatism. It may be easier for Dean, and the activists cheering him on, to view the Senate bill as an affront to their values precisely because so few of their interests are directly at stake in the fierce fight over this imperfect but landmark legislation.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/12/deans_blind_spot.php

[NJmaverick]

1. I will do you one better, taking care of people with out insurance is more expense than if they were

insured as people will use the ER for their doctor (much more expensive) and their diseases will progress to much worse conditions and lead to other conditions (like untreated high blood pressure leading to stroke or heart issues)

[HopeOverFear]

2. there you go

Those who can appreciate the lives of Afghans in Afghanistans,
and the lives of soldiers fighting, but not necessarily the 30 million
Americans who would be helped by the HCR bill that is currently waiting
to pass to go to conference, many of them minorities.

like I told NJmaverick...faux pacifists.

[treestar]

3. The reverse of Republicans who don't care how far we go into debt

to pay for wars and killing but scream as soon as the money is going to be spent on Americans.

[HopeOverFear]

4. EXACTLY!

[Cha]

5. Kick for helping those who need it the most.

[old mark]

6. Actually, EVERYONE needs it...I was diagnosd with diabetes several years ago,

and it seems that I have had it for many years before it was discovered. I had no health coverage for most of my adult life, till I was in my late 40's, and I never went to a doctor for all those years. Had I been diagnosed sooner, I would have had a better life - now I fear the consequenses of long term uncontrolled diabetes.
I know certain groups have less than other groups, but EVERYONE needs it.

mark

[rebel with a cause]

7. those with college educations better take notice of one thing.

What is happening to those less educated might be happening to them in a few years.

In these parts (pardon the folksy talk) there are quite a few highly educated middle-aged citizens among those with no insurance. They have little or no income and do not qualify for financial help/medicaid from the government because they are not yet 65 and do not have children under 18. The fact that they have a high education also goes against them because they are considered to be more self sufficient than those without education, which is not always true. (I use to be one of these and if my disability had not came through, would still be one.) There are often manual jobs available which require experience when jobs requiring education are not. This is made worse because this is an area with a University and several community colleges and there are a lot of diplomas out there.

Another thing I consider in this is that my parents generation did not even need a high school diploma to make a good living. Today a high school diploma does not get you very far, and a bachelors degree is not much better. My son has a Bachelors and he has his job (in his field) because of the experience he got working his way through college. My daughter has a Bachelors (quit just short of Masters) and she works at a job that just requires a HS diploma. She is bored out of her mind and feels like she is wasting her live. She could be just one downsize away from being one of those who are among the over-educated unemployed.