Number of uninsured climbs to highest figure since passage of Medicare, Medicaid
50 million uninsured shows urgency of enacting single-payer Medicare for all: national doctors group
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 13, 2011
Local physicians in 43 states available for comment (See historical table of uninsured by state below).
Official estimates by the Census Bureau showing an increase of about 1 million in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2010 – to a record high of 49.9 million persons, or 16.3 percent of the population, under the bureau’s revised calculation method – underscore the urgency of going beyond the Obama administration’s federal health law and swiftly implementing a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all program, spokespersons for Physicians for a National Health Program said today.
Employment-based coverage continued to decline. The bureau said 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is widely viewed as the model for the federal health law, 370,000 people remained uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is widely viewed as the model for the federal health law, 370,000 people remained uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
Some states posted greater than a 3-percentage-point to 5-percentage-point increase in their uninsured rate, namely Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and South Carolina. In terms of absolute numbers, Louisiana had the largest increase in the number of uninsured, 240,700, followed by New York (177,700) and South Carolina (173,300). (See link to table of historical state-based data below.)
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/september/number-of-uninsured-climbs-to-highest-figure-since-passage-of-medicare-medicaidOur legislation should be based on common sense --
that we are the only nation without universal health care defies all common sense --
and speaks loudly of undue and illegitimate influence by corporations on our elected
officials!