Today I spent some time playing with 2006-2007 census data and here is a simple chart which shows quite an important trend.
Bars on a chart below show what percentage of people from a certain income group are uninsured. From this chart it is very clear that groups of people with higher income tend to have significantly lower ratio of uninsured.
Today I also read in the new study that an average family with health insurance spends $1000 a year to cover costs for uninsured folks who got to an emergency room, received the care and didn’t pay. And each insured individual shells out $370 to support uninsured. Every time when uninsured person gets into a hospital and doesn’t pay for services hospital has to add this cost to their rates which automatically pushes up insurance premiums. In the same study it was reported that government programs like Medicaid and Medicare pay only 26% of uninsured costs while uninsured themselves pay 37%. This leaves 47% unpaid which adds up to 43 billion of unpaid bills which end up on our premiums…
Looking at all this data it gets quite obvious to me why Obama is trying to do something about health insurance during current recession. Lots of newly unemployed folks are also becoming uninsured which automatically adds to unpaid hospital bills and adds up to this 43 billion. And since lots of people are also in foreclosure right now percentage of unpaid bills will only grow. So unless this trend is stopped in several years we could end up in insurance costs which are several times more than what we pay right now… Not a very optimistic picture, right?
Table below showsdependency between number of uninsured individuals and their family income in more details.
| Family Income (People in families, in unrelated subfamilies, or unrelated individuals) | All | Uninsured | % of Uninsured | All | Uninsured | % of Uninsured |
| All…………………………………………. | 296,824 | 46,995 | 15.8 | 299,106 | 45,657 | 15.3 |
| Less than $25,000……………..……… | 66,498 | 18,322 | 27.6 | 66,017 | 17,802 | 27.0 |
| $25,000 to $49,999…………….……… | 73,244 | 14,483 | 19.8 | 70,404 | 13,732 | 19.5 |
| $50,000 to $74,999…………….……… | 54,784 | 6,863 | 12.5 | 54,414 | 6,870 | 12.6 |
| $75,000 or more……………….……….. | 102,298 | 7,327 | 7.2 | 108,271 | 7,253 | 6.7 |
| In families or unrelated subfamilies…. | 246,566 | 36,572 | 14.8 | 246,959 | 34,992 | 14.2 |
| Less than $25,000……………..……… | 40,431 | 10,958 | 27.1 | 39,683 | 10,453 | 26.3 |
| $25,000 to $49,999…………….……… | 58,612 | 12,154 | 20.7 | 55,004 | 11,208 | 20.4 |
| $50,000 to $74,999…………….……… | 49,282 | 6,379 | 12.9 | 48,407 | 6,367 | 13.2 |
| $75,000 or more……………….……….. | 98,240 | 7,080 | 7.2 | 103,865 | 6,965 | 6.7 |
| Unrelated individuals (15 or older).….. | 50,258 | 10,423 | 20.7 | 52,147 | 10,665 | 20.5 |
| Less than $25,000……………..……… | 26,067 | 7,364 | 28.2 | 26,334 | 7,349 | 27.9 |
| $25,000 to $49,999…………….……… | 14,632 | 2,330 | 15.9 | 15,400 | 2,524 | 16.4 |
| $50,000 to $74,999…………….……… | 5,501 | 483 | 8.8 | 6,007 | 503 | 8.4 |
| $75,000 or more……………….……….. | 4,057 | 246 | 6.1 | 4,406 | 289 | 6.5 |