America's uninsured

We hear, read and see a good bit about the 47 million Americans who do not have health insurance, and it is implied that this is a scandalous shortcoming of our society, or of our government, or of our capitalist system, or some such thing. Often accompanying these news stories is anecdotal evidence consisting of personal stories of a few of the 47 million unfortunate Americans that cannot afford to buy a health insurance policy. The  implicit message being sent is: “These Americans, your friends and neighbors, do not have health care.”

America’s uninsured are in the news again, by virtue of a Census Bureau report released late last month showing that, as The Washington Post put it, “The nation's poverty rate declined last year for the first time this decade, but the number of Americans without health insurance rose to a record 47 million,” or to about 16 percent of the population. The Post told its readers that “The figures also reflect a continuing decline in employer-provided coverage. The percentage of people covered by employer-based health insurance fell to 59.7 percent in 2006, down from 60.2 percent in 2005. The figure was 64.2 percent as recently as 2000.”

We also learned that “the new census data show that many of the newly uninsured are working Americans from middle- and high-income families. Of the 2.2 million people who became uninsured in 2006, 1.4 million had a household income of $75,000 or higher. About 1.2 million of the newly uninsured worked full time.”

And, the story ended with this opinion from Harvard Medical School professor Stephanie J. Woolhandler: “This is about the problem of the uninsured spreading to the middle class and working people,” she said. The Post identified Woolhandler as a liberal advocate of creating a government-run national health insurance program. “That's the thing that's emerging newly this time," she concluded. Clearly, the intent of The Post’s story is to lead us to the conclusion that the solution to this crisis is socialized medicine.

Absent from this story, however, is any meaningful breakdown that helps us understand just who is uninsured, for how long, and why. Also absent is the fact that the total of 47 million is disputed.

If you really want to find the truth about the uninsured in America, a little perseverance will turn up information like this: According to Census data, a little less than 46.6 million persons in America are uninsured, not 47 million. By rounding up to the next whole number, it does bring that figure up to 47 million, but it also makes the problem seem just a little worse than it really is.

So, more accurately, 46.6 million are uninsured; 400 thousand people are not insignificant.

But the Census data also show th