AcademyHealth Stateside - 03/30/2009 (Plain Text Version)In this issue: The Crisis of the Uninsured and Resources on the Issue
As of 2007, the number of uninsured Americans totaled 45.7 million. There is no doubt that this number has already increased in the face of recession and rising unemployment rates. As the debate surrounding broad national health care reform heats up once again, it is a good time to be reminded of the consequences associated with having such a significant uninsured population. A February 2009 report from The Institute of Medicine (IOM), “America’s Uninsured Crisis: Consequences for Health and Health Care,” responds to the question of whether health insurance actually matters to health and, more specifically, assesses the research evidence on the consequences of uninsurance, including health outcomes, access to health care services, and economic impacts. This report follows a series of six reports that the IOM—with funding from The Robert Wood
According to the IOM’s 2009 report, there is broad consensus that health insurance coverage is declining and that this decline is likely to continue without some sort of concerted action. The IOM asserts that a substantial body of high-quality research has found that being uninsured is harmful, particularly for children. The gap between the needs of people without health insurance and access to services to address these needs results in unnecessary illness, suffering, and death. However, uninsurance does not just affect the health of those who are uninsured. A range of research suggests that when rates of uninsurance are high within a community, insured adults in that same community are more likely to find it difficult to obtain needed health care and are less satisfied with the care they receive. For more information on the uninsured in the
SCI has compiled a small set of recent articles and reports that highlight data about the uninsured in the current landscape: Why Health Insurance Is Important “Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health Insurance Is Burdening Working Families—Findings from the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Surveys, 2001–2007” “Seeing Red: The Growing Burden of Medical Bills and Debt Faced by U.S. Families” “Five Basic Facts on the Uninsured” “Health Coverage in a Period of Rising Unemployment” “Rising Unemployment, Medicaid and the Uninsured” “Health Spending Projections through 2018: Recession Effects Add Uncertainty to the Outlook” “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll” |