By Dan Witters
GALLUP, January 23, 2019
The U.S. adult uninsured rate stood at 13.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to Americans’ reports of their own health insurance coverage, its highest level since the first quarter of 2014. While still below the 18% high point recorded before implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s individual health insurance mandate in 2014, today’s level is the highest in more than four years, and well above the low point of 10.9% reached in 2016. The 2.8-percentage-point increase since that low represents a net increase of about seven million adults without health insurance.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
According to this GALLUP survey, the uninsured rate declined from 18 percent just before implementation of the Affordable Care Act down to 10.9 percent in 2016. It has since increased to the current level of 13.7 percent, a net increase of about seven million adults now without health insurance since its 2016 low.
This is the program that was enacted after an intensive political effort that began with rejection of the single payer model that would have reduced the uninsured rate to zero percent.
A majority of the nation now understands that we need to enact and implement Single Payer Medicare for All – a program in which everyone is automatically enrolled for life. Yet where are our politicians headed? The Republicans support only guaranteeing access to coverage for individuals with preexisting disorders, yet they offer no practical plan for making that happen. The Democrats campaigned on Medicare for All, yet they want to take us back down the same ACA pathway, leaving tens of millions uninsured and many millions more underinsured.
The original goal supposedly was to make health care affordable and accessible for everyone. The Affordable Care Act, even with the various proposed tweaks, cannot possibly ever get us there because of its unrectifiable design defects. In contrast, the Single Payer Medicare for All model is specifically designed to accomplish that goal, and it would actually work.
So the numbers of uninsured have recently again increased by seven million, and the politicians want more of that system? Shall we ask those seven million uninsured people what they think of it? Or do we even care? (How could anyone ask that last question? But…)
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