Home
PageWednesday, July 23, 2008
Health-insurance policy, Cover Florida passed the Legislature in May as a way to bring down the state's 3.7 million uninsured, is unlikely to work, according to a report by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit policy-research group based in Washington. The center analyzed new legislation from both Georgia and Florida designed to reduce the number of uninsured and found lacking in both. Neither of the new state policies provides subsidies to aid low income uninsured residents pay for their health insurance.
Georgia made tax breaks for high deductible plans, while Florida rewrote its rules to permit insurance companies to provide low-cost plans with limited benefits. Low-cost, health plans have been given a try before with limited success, the center said, including in Florida. The state's 6-year-old, Health Flex plan had lesser than 2,300 members as of Dec 2007, the report said and virtually all those who enrolled in Health Flex did so in counties where they got subsidies to help them pay.
"When low income people do enroll in bare-bones plans, they face a significant risk of experiencing high out-of-pocket costs," according to the center's report. "Bare-bones plans offered limited or no coverage for important benefits such as inpatient care, and they often have high deductibles or other cost-sharing charges." The barest of Florida's bare-bones health insurance plans are expected to cost about $150 per month which is still very high for those with low incomes, according to the center. "Because most uninsured people have low incomes, they need subsidies to help them afford coverage."
posted by renaa
@ 6:54 PM
permanent link | Post a Comment |
0
comments
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
One in 7 Americans, one in 6 Americans under age of 65 doesn't have any sort of health insurance, according to a report. Lack of health insurance is greatest in the Southwest and lowest in the Northeast, with lot of variation, by about 20% among the states.
"Overall, 43.1 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2007," says CDC researcher Robin A. Cohen, PhD, tells WebMD. "Almost 54 million or 18.2% of Americans were uninsured for at least part of the year, and 30.6 million or 10.3% had been uninsured for more than a year at the time of interview."
The numbers of CDC come from the National Health Interview Survey, which is an annual in-person survey of U.S. civilians. The CDC released two reports. One combines 2004 to 2006 data from 41 states with at least 1,000 survey respondents. The other was based on preliminary 2007 survey data from the 20 largest states.
56 percent of unemployed adults under the age of 65 lacked health insurance for at least part of 2007; 32 percent were uninsured for more than a year. 22 percent of adults working lacked health insurance for at least part of 2007; 14 percent were uninsured for over a year. More than one in four 18 to 34 year old lacks health insurance, with uninsurance rates higher for men than for women.
A third of Hispanic-Americans lacked health insurance in 2007; about one-fourth were uninsured for about a year. In 2007, 37 percent of poor working age adults had some sort of public health insurance and 25 percent had private insurance. Americans with less than a high school education were two to four times more likely to be uninsured than better-educated adults.
posted by renaa
@ 6:29 PM
permanent link | Post a Comment |
0
comments