Health

Rant

47 Million Uninsured Americans, Really?

Posted 30 months ago|23 comments|1,829 views
Written by
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
Here are some numbers that have been bandied about lately.

It seems that when we are told that 47 million in America are without health insurance, they don't strictly mean that all of those people are actually Americans, or even want health insurance.

At the risk of being lambasted, here are the numbers and links to sites.
These figures are according to Joseph Antos.
Joseph Antos is also a commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, a health adviser to the Congressional Budget Office, and an adjunct professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining AEI, Mr. Antos was Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office.

Uninsured who are NOT U.S. CITIZENS - 45% of the 47 million.

Broken down by age, 18 - 24 years old - 29.3% of the 47 million.

25 - 35 years old - 26.9% of the 47 million.

Broken down by salary, $75,000 or more per year - 8.5% of the 47 million.

And here is an excerpt from Heritage.org (I read the left wing stuff too)

'Part of the apparent over-counting of the uninsured in the Census data is likely due to a serious undercounting of Medicaid enrollees. While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Medicaid enrollment of 51 million in 2002, the Census reported only 33 million, a difference of 18 million people. This trend continues in 2003 with a .7 percentage point increase in Medicaid enrollment by the Census Bureau, putting that number at 35 million, but CMS reports 53 million enrollees. This discrepancy is, to say the least, problematic.'


Tell me what you think.
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COMMENTS
Colorado
Colorado
Westcliffe, CO
30 months ago: Interesting, for a long time I have been wondering about that number, but I could never find a real government site that confirmed that data and showed how they gathered the information. Keep up dating if you find anything more.
Colorado
Colorado
Westcliffe, CO
30 months ago: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124579852347944191.html

Interesting article
30 months ago: How do those non-citizens, 45% of the 47 million uninsured, receive medical treatment? Those people will opt out of any insurance program, either private or government, because they know the taxpayers at the local level will get stuck paying the bill.
30 months ago: "Uninsured who are NOT U.S. CITIZENS - 45% of the 47 million"

Just looked it up on Fact Check. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, it's more like 21% and that's including illegal as well as legal immigrants.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/how_many_of_the_uninsured_are_us.html

yerp.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: Factcheck.org is a left leaning institution, and the material they used for their analysis was from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070718153509.aspx

Take the time to read it, it will point you in the right direction.
Colorado
Colorado
Westcliffe, CO
30 months ago: I found this whole thing very interesting so I decided to go to a bunch of health sites and even called a few to get some new quotes on health care. the cheapest plans where around 40 bucks a month that covered after the first 2000 and included catastrophic care.

I then pretended to be a smoker and over weight, reasons that would cause insurance to give me a pre-existing condition. I was able to get covered, for about 90 bucks a month with a 0-500 dollar deductible. The most I could find for the best health-care was 200 a month.

This is just a plot for government to gain control over more of the country and economy. Wow, I was even half in favor of "helping the poor." The very few, non-mental people that can not fill out the paperwork, can stay uninsured
30 months ago: Great stuff OOTB. It amazes me that with the amount of European nations with nationalized health care resorting to privatization in order to keep up. Six month to a year waiting periods for surgery in Britain and other countries. Germany and France reduced to rationing of health care etc. etc. etc. That now America in all it's uniformed glory wants to jump on the band wagon as it races over the cliff! This is beyond reason it is about control. The way to control the amount spent on Medicare and Medicaid which is also a government socialized program bankrupting this country is for government to have the control to ration health care. It is a perfect example of the old "bait and switch". The wonderful "free" health care which looks so grand will be replaced with mediocre and rationed health care once we buy it. Sorry no refund here for buyers remorse.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
30 months ago: This is great.

First you cite Joseph Antos of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)--the AEI of Milt Friedman, Gerald Ford, Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, and "neoconservative godfather" Irving Kristol.

Then you slam FactCheck.org--an extension of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania; a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that accepts no funding from corporations, labor unions, political parties, or lobbyists; and is staffed by journalists that run the ideological gamut (The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, etc.)--as "left leaning."

Then I look at your links. The Heritage Foundation? The "No. 1 Washington think tank dedicated to marketing conservative ideas"?

No interest on their part in downplaying the number of uninsured in this country. None at all.
30 months ago: 2/3 of all of the statistics we are fed are false? Let me get this straight so I understand. We have a pie. We cut that pie into 3 equal pieces. We take 2 of those pieces and throw them away as they are tainted and only trust the 1/3? You hit all of the points on Obama, Gates and Crowley with that statistical insight. Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Chris D
Chris D
Seattle, WA
30 months ago: @Out Of The Box -- Interesting post. I think that the health care debate is very confusing and more information is always better.

@JAK Gladney -- My thoughts exactly on the sources. I would agree that FactCheck is pretty middle of the road.
30 months ago: Read the Heathcare Bill? John you wrote it and you can't explain it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbwND52rrw

This guy needs a early retirement so he can visit his felon wife in jail. I'm guessing his felon wife will be in jail, unless he has already made a deal.

What a jerk.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: JAK, naturally I knew you would balk on the Heritage.Org article, that's why I threw the disclaimer in there. The statements made are referenced by name and easily verified.

Gov. Sonny Perdue had this to say in his address to Senate Comittee on Finance
"1. Inaccuracy of the Count Reduces Allotments. The measures used to count uninsured and
eligible children have proven ineffective in Southern states, resulting in the most severe funding
shortfalls in the country.
Until this fiscal year, CMS has relied on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population
Survey (CPS) to estimate both the overall number of low-income children and the number of lowincome
children who are uninsured. The CPS survey estimates come from only a sample of the
population, and as a result, those estimates can differ widely from the results of a complete census.
To compensate for sampling errors, the CMS is then required to use a three-year average of these
estimates. But this overall approach still leaves tremendous room for errors."

Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: On Factcheck, not a slam at all, just an observation. Are the Annenbergs the same uber-rich publishers that hired both William Ayers and Barack Obama to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge?

Here is what wiki says of ol' Walter Annendale:

While Annenberg ran his publishing empire as a business, he was not afraid to use it for his own ends. One of his publications, The Philadelphia Inquirer, was influential in ridding Philadelphia of its largely corrupt city government in 1949. It attacked McCarthyism in the 1950s, and campaigned for the Marshall Plan following World War II.

In 1966, Annenberg used the pages of The Inquirer to cast doubt on the candidacy of Democrat Milton Shapp, for governor of Pennsylvania. Shapp was highly critical of the proposed merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the New York Central and was pushing the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission to stop it. Walter Annenberg, who according to his New York Times obituary, was the biggest individual stockholder of the Pennsylvania Railroad, wanted to see the merger go through and was frustrated with Shapp's opposition. During a press conference, an Inquirer reporter asked Shapp if he had ever been a patient in a mental hospital. Having never been in one, Shapp simply said "no". The next day, a five-column front page Inquirer headline read, “Shapp Denies Mental Institution Stay.” Shapp and others have attributed his loss of the election to Annenberg's newspaper.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: I hope I didn't step into it with that one, but just look at the site as it has evolved. As right wing as Heritage is, factcheck has gone that far to the left. It resembles a tabloid magazine for the left as it is now.

Case in point:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/tax_tally_trickery.html

This is why I feel this piece is biased, going by the line in the piece, remember the premis was Obama voting 97 times for higher taxes:

1 Voting against a tax cut is in essence voting for higher taxes than they would be had the measure passed.

2 This one is a push, decreased taxes on some, but actually increased them on others.

3 Eleven votes to increase taxes is still eleven votes to increase taxes,even though the factchecker was sure to point out that only the evil rich would be affected.

4 17 votes still fits the criteria, even if it was only on 7 issues.

5 Instead of just checking the facts, they editorialize and rationalize.

Then they go into their Obama endorsement, as they are prone to do on almost any negative claim about him.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: Siempre,
I willl not deny that some changes need to be made in the way we handle our uninsured. A moral (notice I didn't use Christian) nation cannot turn its back on those in need of care. Even the illegal immigrants are still human beings, and deserve to be treated as such.

But I do know there are better ways to do it other than handing our health care system over to the government. These are the same idiots that pay $2000 for a hammer and $30,000 for a toilet. Heck, to build one visitors center in the capitol, it came in four years late, and the original price tag was $71 million, but it wound up costing
over $621 million, nine times the original estimate. Good grief, can you imagine?

How about giving tax breaks for those who donate to insurance pools? Government run charities may be the way to go, not government sponsored robbery.

The constitution, and yes, I got a spanking on this a while back, not my strong suit yet, but the constitution declares that taxes levied shall be uniform, but the plan that was before congress called for a tax, or a fine only on those who did not have insurance.
Section 401 . Any individual (or family) that does not have health insurance would have to pay a new tax, roughly equal to the smaller of 2.5% of your income or the cost of a health insurance plan.

If you think we have a racket now, wait till they get to start robbing out of a whole new cookie jar. Think Social Security.
Colorado
Colorado
Westcliffe, CO
30 months ago: There is one I do not understand. Regardless of left or right or whatever. How will one city(Washington) be able to improve health care for 300 plus million LEGAL citizens let alone the ones we do not know about.

I have a hard time getting my head around it. So I have decided that let them do it. Non of us have a say anyhow, do we? We get house elections next year, but that will be past the vote date.

If anyone thinks this economy is safe, think again. I have no idea what will happen but having this much government involvement can not be good. People make mistakes, that is natural, but when people have that much influence and screw up. It could be economy ending.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: Well, some of them up there in Washington think that we don't have a say, but events in recent days seem to indicate otherwise.
30 months ago: I also feel there are many angles and options that are being thrown to the curb in order to run to nationalized health care. We know very well that frivolous law suits are causing health care to go up yet little has been done on that. I also feel there should be a basic plan to help the poor yet we can see from so many other nationalized health care programs that when something is considered "free" (which it is not) the usage of it increases. I feel this is what has happened to some degree with our welfare program. Entire generations have grown up on welfare and for these people welfare is no longer considered a safety net it is considered something the government "owes" them and thus there is no qualms about getting everything they can from these programs (legitimately or otherwise). There is an article on Sweden's welfare system which I hope to do a post on but basically people have lost the drive to be productive and the entire system is collapsing from within. Income tax in Sweden is from 35%-60% and it's health care system is reverting back to a certain percentage of privatization due to such poor conditions in the Nationalized program. Due to information as this I find it difficult to believe this move is not about control rather than revamping the health care system.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
30 months ago: I did read your disclaimer, and while "lambaste" is a strong term, some due diligence on sources is necessary, since you brought it up.

The "radicalization" of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is a little suspect. I've seen Dick Morris try to make this connection, read Stanley Kurtz's NRO piece--mostly circumstantial, since Kurtz admits he hasn't seen the document cache at UIC that would flesh-out the Obama/Ayers Annenberg relationship, but nevertheless suggests Ayers/Obama influence was used to deny him access (always fun, since that can't be proven, but is enough to fuel cover-up conspiracies).

You see the FactCheck aim as editorializing. I see it as providing much needed context to otherwise cherry-picked, disembodied votes. I could take a set of random Republican votes on an issue, with various rider legislation, and make it seem that the Republican in question was voting for the rider, and not the whole package, which, on the whole, was consistent with his philosophy. Or I could take procedural votes, as the McCain camp did in this case, as a stand-in for straight up or down votes on specific floor legislation. Tricky, tricky stuff.

Beyond that, I don't see any "endorsement" of Obama on this point--it's not a zero-sum game. McCain can be called out, and Obama can still be guilty of using the same sort of distortions. There are links at the bottom of the page to Obama camp distortions.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
30 months ago: The Annenberg bio: this makes any interpretation of ideological slant even trickier. I see a philanthropist using his media empire to protect his business interests: a la William Randolph Hearst, Robert McCormick, and Rupert Murdoch. In the Shapp case, Annenberg closed ranks with other members of the broader PA business community to torpedo Shapp's campaign--people like arch conservative Richard Mellon (whose family would later be instrumental in Clinton smears). So if vague connections to Obama and Ayers make are proof of liberal fellow-travelling, what do you make Annenberg's connection with the Mellon family?
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
30 months ago: I take back part of what I said about the Factcheck.org service. It appears the articles are not homogeneously liberal or conservative, it depends on who rendered the data.
It's more pop-culture oriented than I prefer, but not totally slanted one way or the other. Thanks for the heads-up.

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