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Audacity of Truth
Debunking the 45mil ‘uninsured’ myth
Dr. Bob Newbell at Tech Central Station does so here. Money quote:
One problem with the 43-45 million uninsured Americans figure is the fact that the statistic is dynamic, not static. “[T]he uninsured population is fluid, with many people gaining and losing coverage,” reported the Congressional Budget Office on May 12, 2003, in a brief on Americans who lack health insurance coverage. “Between half and two-thirds of the people who experienced a period of time without insurance in 1998, for example, had coverage for other portions of the year.” Thus, the 40-odd million uninsured people in December of a given year are mostly a different group of people from the 40-odd million uninsured from the previous January.
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14 Responses to “Debunking the 45mil ‘uninsured’ myth”
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It really ought not be so much consolation that there is this much volatility for each individual’s insurance coverage. It should be no consolation that more than 40 million people face the risk of lack of insurance in a given time period.
It actually *is* consolation, actus … considering the fact that John Kerry during the election season deliberately made it sound like 40 million of the *same* ppl were walking around without health insurance daily. It’s the same situation as the distortion of the figures we have on the poor of homeless here in America. Everytime a Democrat in DC opens their mouth to complain about the homeless or the poor, they make it sound like those same homeless and poor people have been that way for 30 years and that’s just not so.
I’ve been without health insurance when I’ve been unemployed and had friends and family who went through the same thing when they lost jobs and couldn’t afford to pick up health insurance through COBRA. Health insurance is not a ‘right’ in this country although if the Dems had their way, we’d have national healthcare, which would be a huge disaster.
BTW, welcome to the ST blog
“It actually *is* consolation, actus … considering the fact that John Kerry during the election season deliberately made it sound like 40 million of the *same* ppl were walking around without health insurance daily”
Its no consolation that the actual number of people who face the lack of insurance in a year is actually higher than 40 million. Why should it be consolation that it be a risk that a lot of people face, rather than just a few readily identifiable people?
“I’ve been without health insurance when I’ve been unemployed and had friends and family who went through the same thing when they lost jobs and couldn’t afford to pick up health insurance through COBRA.”
Me too. It sucks. Good thing nothing happened.
And your solution would be ….?
“And your solution would be ….? ”
To the problem of low insurance? My solution would be what seems to work in a lot of other industrialized countries. There’s plenty to pick and choose. We don’t need the UK’s NHS, and we don’t need canada’s prohibition on private practice outside of the system.
We also don’t need people inventing unsupported rosy conclusions from facts that actually support a worse conclusion.
There’s not anyone ‘inventing rosy conclusions’ here, actus. Just trying to put add some reality to the repeatedly trumped non-insured healthcare numbers. The problem has been embellished so much by the usual suspects – much like poverty and sexual disease ‘issues’ were trumped up back in the 60s which paved the way for disastrous gov’t ‘answers’ to problems that were, for all intents and purposes, non existent. No one’s saying we don’t have a problem with healthcare in this country but let’s please not overblow the numbers into something more than they are.
“There’s not anyone ‘inventing rosy conclusions’ here, actus. Just trying to put add some reality to the repeatedly trumped non-insured healthcare numbers”
And the reality is that in a given year *more* than 45 million face lack of insurance.
“No one’s saying we don?t have a problem with healthcare in this country but let?s please not overblow the numbers into something more than they are”
I know. As you point out, the numbers of people affected are actually much hhigher, and the 45 million is a conservative estimate.
Source?
The source is your statement that 45 million is a dynamic number. Thus during a year, more than 45 million faced uninsurance, but at a given time it was only 45 million. Say if every month half a million gain and half a million lose insurance. Over the year, that means that 45 million (at the beggining of teh year) plus six more million, faced uninsurance that year.
I fail to see the logic in that. Saying it’s a ‘dynamic’ number doesn’t prove that 40-45 mil is a ‘conservative’ estimate, actus.
“I fail to see the logic in that. Saying it’s a ‘dynamic’ number doesn?t prove that 40-45 mil is a ‘conservative’ estimate, actus.”
Its a conservative estimate of how many people were without insurance in a year because we know more people were without it, as they lost insurance throughout the year. Even more than conservative, we know its the lower bound.
Actus, I think we should just agree to disagree with this one, ok? I’m sure we’ll pick this issue up again in the future when I post about it again
I’d be happy to explain it to you.
I’m sure you would, actus