USA Today
September 26, 2002
Bridge temporary insurance gaps
By Steven Findlay
Monday, the Census Bureau will release its annual tally of health-insurance
coverage in the USA. Once again we will be reminded of a shameful statistic:
In 2001, some 40 million or so Americans — one in seven — had no health
insurance during the entire year. That includes about 8 million children.
But the new Census numbers aren’t a complete picture of the problem. Many
more Americans have gaps in coverage than this annual report indicates.
That’s because the survey measures (or purports to measure) health-insurance
status during an entire year. But tens of millions of Americans lose their
coverage for some part of the year, sometimes for just a few weeks or
months, a dilemma not reflected in the statistics.
That’s why it’s time to stop using the Census Bureau’s annual report of the
full-year uninsured as the only benchmark of this problem. Instead, the
focus should shift to measures of the number of Americans each year who have
any gap in their coverage.
From 1996 to 1999, between 59 million and 62 million Americans were
uninsured at some point each year, according to a large-scale survey
conducted by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That’s
one in four people under the age of 65 (the age at which Medicare provides
universal coverage). Another Census Bureau analysis, done in 1998, found
that during a three-year period 30% of the population under age 65 can
expect to experience a gap in health insurance.
The change in measuring the uninsured is needed for both symbolic and
concrete reasons. Symbolically, the much larger number may garner more
political attention, as it should. The switch also would send a strong
message that any gap in health-insurance coverage, even of a few weeks, is
dangerous and unacceptable.
Bridging the gaps that millions of Americans have in their coverage would
underscore the fact that health insurance is a necessity, not a luxury. That
would be a good start down the road to universal coverage.
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020926/4483190s.htm
Comment: Better yet, let’s skip the start and go straight to universal
coverage.