Report Projects Up To 66 Million Americans Could be Uninsured by 2019 without Health Reform.

"Report Projects Up To 66 Million Americans Could be Uninsured by 2019 Unless Health Reform Is Enacted
Businesses Could See Their Health Care Costs Double Within 10 Years; Study Uses Simulation Model To Illustrate Future Trends In Health Care Costs And Coverage


As key congressional committees prepare to introduce landmark health reform legislation, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) report projects that—if federal reform efforts are not enacted—within 10 years the cost of health care for businesses could double, and the number of uninsured Americans could reach 65.7 million—with middle-income families hardest hit.

Researchers from the Urban Institute prepared the analysis using the Institute's Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model, estimating how coverage and cost trends would change between now and 2019. The study examined three alternative scenarios:

1. Worst case—slow growth in incomes and continuing high growth rates for health care costs;
2. Intermediate case—somewhat faster growth in incomes, but a lower growth rate for health care costs;
3. Best case—full employment, faster income growth and even slower growth in health care costs.

Under any economic scenario, the analysis shows a tremendous strain on business owners and their employees over the next decade if reform is not enacted. There would be a dramatic decline in the percentage of people insured through their employers, and millions more would become uninsured. There would be large growth in public programs, and major increases in health care spending and levels of uncompensated care. While all income levels would be affected, middle-class working families would be hardest hit.

“This report makes clear that as battered as our health system has been in recent years, unless we take action, the worst is far from over,” said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., RWJF's president and CEO. “Without comprehensive health care reform, costs will continue to skyrocket, millions more will lose insurance, and the health of Americans will suffer. Congress must act quickly and decisively to make quality health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans.”

Using national survey and other economic data, the Urban model examines three scenarios that each assume varying levels of income growth and increases in health care costs. The report shows that if health care reform is not enacted:

* Individuals and families would see health care costs dramatically increase. Total individual and family spending on premiums and out-of-pocket costs could increase 68 percent by 2019 in the worst-case scenario. Even under the best case scenario, health care costs would likely increase at least 46 percent.
* Businesses could see their health care costs double within 10 years. The model shows that employer spending on premiums would more than double – from $429.8 billion in 2009 to $885.1 billion in 2019. Even under best-case economic conditions, employer spending on health insurance premiums would increase 72 percent. The result would likely be far fewer Americans being offered or accepting employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI). Estimates suggest a drop from 56.1 percent of Americans being covered by ESI in 2009, to as few as 49.2 percent by 2019.
* Spending on government insurance programs could double. In the worst case scenario, spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program could increase from $251.2 billion this year to $519.7 billion in 2019, as more people are priced out of private insurance and become eligible for government programs. Enrollment in these programs could increase to 20.3 percent in 2019 in the worst case, or one in every five Americans. That’s an increase of 13.3 million people from current figures.
* Millions more people would be uninsured. The model projects that without reform, 65.7 million people could be uninsured by 2019, compared to 62.2 million in the intermediate case and 53.1 million under the best case.
* The amount of uncompensated care in the health system would increase. In the worst case scenario, totals for uncompensated care could more than double, from $62.1 billion in 2009 to $141.4 billion in 2019 in the worst case, and even $106.6 billion in the best case—putting a tremendous strain on health systems, hospitals, providers of clinical care and local municipalities.

The report makes clear that the biggest effects of not having health reform would be felt by families with moderate incomes, who have less access to public coverage. Under the model, the number of middle-income earners without insurance would increase sharply from 12.5 million in 2009 to as many as 18.2 million in 2019.

“By using a wealth of economic data on the behavior of individuals and firms, the model allows us to analyze what delaying or failing on reform means for working families,” said lead author John Holahan, Ph.D., director of the Health Policy Research Center at the Urban Institute. “Increases in premiums cause fewer employers to offer—and fewer employees to accept—health insurance coverage. If federal action is not taken, many Americans would lose their employer-sponsored insurance over the next decade and move to Medicaid and other government programs. Middle-income families would truly be stuck—too well off to be eligible for public programs, but too poor to afford their own health insurance.”

http://www.rwjf.org/healthreform/product.jsp?id=42968

No one will be happy with it, I predict, but it will happen.

from the California Nurses Association, said on Moyers' Journal that 14,000 are losing health insurance DAILY.

It's not going to freaking take until 2019! A story in March came out and talked about 87.1 MILLION already without coverage in the years of 2007 and 2008.

lack of health care because of lack of health insurance or lack of coverage. To me this has always been a conservative - mostly Republican - caused problem. It is like they are at war with America and America's poor. Letting 20,000 (minimum) die every year are casualty numbers they are willing to live with.
BTW I have heard estimates up to 80,000 a year which is more believable to me. The number of folks who will not go to a doctor until way too late or who skip or cut medicines because of finances has to be a factor in many deaths.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/categories/Articles%20of%20Interest/
NATION
Death by no insurance?
Doctor and patient had colon cancer. She was uninsured and died. He is alive, convinced she could be too.


By Lindsey Tanner
Associated Press

April 4, 2007

Dr. Perry Klaassen lived to tell about his frightening ordeal with colon cancer.

His patient did not.

Same age, same state, same disease. Striking similarities, Klaassen thought when Shirley Searcy came to his clinic in Oklahoma City. It was July 2002, a year after his own diagnosis.

But there was one huge difference: Klaassen had health insurance, Searcy did not.

His treatment included surgery two days after diagnosis and costly new drugs. He is alive six years later despite disease that has now spread to his lungs, liver and pelvis.

"I received the most efficient care possible. I was 61 years old and had good group health insurance through my workplace," he wrote in a medical journal essay that contrasts his care with that of his uninsured patient.

The doctor didn't name Shirley Searcy in his March 14 article. After all he'd been through, he couldn't remember her name. But he dug for days through old medical files searching for her identity after he was interviewed by The Associated Press, hoping to shine a more powerful light on the plight of the uninsured.

The widowed mother of eight grown children, Searcy had little money. When she began to sense she might be sick, she put off going to the doctor for a year because she knew she couldn't pay the medical bills. Deeply religious, she put her faith in God, according to her family.

By the time she saw Klaassen, her cancer had spread from her colon to her liver. She had surgery but rejected chemotherapy.

"She just really didn't feel like she wanted to endure what that would cost physically or financially," said her daughter-in-law, Karen Searcy.

Shirley Searcy died Dec. 22, 2003, about 18 months after her diagnosis.

Searcy's is a story that's far from unique. An estimated 112,000 Americans with cancer have no health insurance, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.

Klaassen's essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association illustrates the issue "close and personal," said the publication's editor, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis.

It underscores that insurance can be a life or death issue, said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a non-partisan policy research organization.

Klaassen, now 67, no longer sees patients but works part-time as medical director of an Oklahoma City group that recruits doctors to give free care to needy patients.

Always healthy and vigorous, his diagnosis in 2001 came as a shock.

Klaassen had a colonoscopy within two weeks after seeing his doctor for pain in his lower abdomen. When the specialist with the results asked, "Is your wife with you?" Klaassen wrote, "I knew immediately that I had colon cancer."

Surgery two days later showed the disease had spread outside the colon wall and to nearby lymph nodes. It was not as advanced as Searcy's, whose disease had spread to the liver.

Searcy married young and had her first child in her teens. Her mechanic husband died in a 1978 car crash, leaving her to raise the family alone. Social Security helped, but the Searcys never had anything extra, family members said.

"Life dealt her more I guess than some people have been dealt," Karen Searcy said.

She didn't work outside the home, didn't venture often beyond her 4 acres and the ranch house where she raised her children in Blanchard, about 30 miles from Oklahoma City. In her later years, reading stories to her dozens of grandchildren was a favorite pastime. She'd figured she'd live long enough to qualify for Medicare at age 65, family members said; she missed it by a year.

"She put off because of no health insurance, and she wanted to trust the Lord. She was hoping to be healed," said her daughter, Melba Spalding.

Klaassen knew immediately that it was colon cancer when she saw him. A colonoscopy weeks later confirmed the diagnosis and that it was incurable.

It was "heartbreaking to all of us," Spalding said. The family had always been close, and Searcy "was pretty well the hub of it," she said.

With insurance, Searcy would have sought treatment sooner, family members said.

"I believe with all my heart that if she had gone to a doctor early on, that she would still be living," Karen Searcy said.

Klaassen also thinks things would have turned out differently if she'd been insured.

"If she had survived at least a year more, she would have had new pills available to her," the same ones that have helped control his disease, Klaassen said.

"People say ... nobody ever dies because they don't have insurance, and I say, 'Yeah, they do.''

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

It's actually 100,000 people in the U.S. dying yearly due to lack of healthcare.