The Demographics of the Uninsured
You sometimes hear talk suggesting that the bulk of the uninsured are just young and overconfident people who don’t really want to pay for health insurance. Today’s new report on health care from the Council of Economic Advisers shows that while there are certainly a lot of uninsured young people, this is hardly the whole story:
It’s also worth emphasizing, as this chart illustrates, that for all the scare stories you hear about “socialized medicine” or the government “coming between you and your doctor” it’s not a coincidence that senior citizens are almost never uninsured. There’s a government program which does that. And of course senior citizens have the most health care needs. If a universal system is good enough for grandma, it’s not clear why we’d view it as terrifying for the rest of us.
26 Responses to “The Demographics of the Uninsured”
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June 2nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
If a universal system is good enough for grandma, it’s not clear why we’d view it as terrifying for the rest of us.
Many grandma’s have private insurance beyond the bare minimum provided by Medicare.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Because in a moment there will be a total dumbfuck coming here to proclaim how it won’t work because then there would be rationing for the old people who are stealing his money via Social Security. Why he would think this is a bad thing isn’t clear. He seems to get off on making life miserable for as many people as possible in order to ensure a little more money and comfort for himself.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
And so would many people who aren’t senior citizens under a system of universal public coverage.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
If a universal system is good enough for grandma, it’s not clear why we’d view it as terrifying for the rest of us.
You could also use military veterans.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Did you write the title of this graph too, Matt?
If I weren’t petrified of Teh Gay, I’d say that you are adorable when you misspell.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I seem to recall the saying Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness
Now wouldn’t the gov not providing me health insurance helping to diminish the very first premise? IOW isn’t it the government’s responsibility to provide me the opportunities to realize the basic ideals of this country?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Because it’s already fantastically expensive, and extending that coverage to everyone will just make it even more fantastically expensive?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Many grandma’s have private insurance beyond the bare minimum provided by Medicare.
Kinda like how many people buy additional food beyond the bare minimum provided by food stamps. Which just goes to prove how much food stamps suck.
C’mon Al, that’s the best you can do?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I guess it’s a bit nitpicky, but you write that, “it’s not a coincidence that senior citizens are almost never uninsured.” The chart shows that, depending on age, between 1% and 2.5% of seniors aren’t covered. One in a hundred isn’t “almost never.” Beyond that, Medicare coverage is provided by mandate, yet we’re less successful at fully meeting that mandate for a fraction of our population than Switzerland is for its entire population (<1% uninsured). The failure to reach more people eligible for Medicare isn’t something you ought to overlook.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
“You could also use military veterans.”
My roommate died of cancer a few months ago. Fortunately, he had insurance provided by the VA. Despite being overstressed right now, the VA provided excellent care for him. He had no complaints. I’ve watched several people die of cancer, and his treatment was as good as anyone else’s. Of course, it was the Army that gave him the cancer in the first place, but at least they treated it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Despite being overstressed right now, the VA provided excellent care for him.
It’s moderately tragic that Obama can’t make this point to support his health plan just because people have the misconception that the VA has anything to do with the mess at Walter Reed.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Most typical are those like a middle-aged married couple friends of mine up in Oregon. He works out of his home illustrating business portfolios and utility company pamphlets and she just lost her office job when the business folded. So, now, she’s grabbing work assignments where she can find them. Sans medical/dental insurance, of course.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Isn’t that the same system that was profiled in the recent Atul Gawande New Yorker piece that everybody was linking too? The one with out of control spending in McCallen Texas? Can you see why someone might find expanding this system to be a little “terrifying?”
A question for progressives: if you want to “reform” health care costs, why not start right now with medicare and medicaid?
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Grandma might rather have employer coverage than Medicare.
Many employer plans are much more comprehensive than Medicare, especially preventive care.
Also, many employer plans may have low copays for doctor’s visits, something Medicare doesn’t have.
You may get Grandma to choose Medicare if it had the same benefits as many employer plans.
If Grandma had no coverage and could get something like Medicare at a decent cost, I’m sure she’d grab at the chance.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
People often have no insurance in their fifties and early sixties when their health can begin to fail and before they are eligible for Medicare.
I don’t think that it is an accident that suicides are increasing in this group, especially among women.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
And so would many people who aren’t senior citizens under a system of universal public coverage.
You ain’t going to get much savings, then.
Hey, I support single payer, universal coverage. If – and only if – you can promise me that we would get substantial savings in our national health care expenditures. I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to think Obama’s plan will generate any savings whatsoever, beyond Peter Orszag’s Magic Asterisk savings that appear out of thin air along with the unicorns.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Sure you would. Even if “only” 50% of the public got all of their health care funding from the universal program, while 50% got (in the aggregate) half their health care funding from this program, that’s 75% of all of the health care dollars spent in the country, still plenty big for efficiencies of scale and bargaining power.
Heck, I’m always reading conservatives poor-mouth the amount that Medicare pays. That’s a much smaller program, and they manage to drive down costs through such efficiencies and bargaining power – and that doesn’t even count the savings from not having an advertising budget or corporate overhead.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 pm
The chart won’t load for me, but I am absolutely positive that MattY took his Soros[TM]-brand shock collar off long enough to finally tell the truth about the uninsured.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
“Soros[TM]-brand shock collar”
I find it amusing that the only people who listen to Soros are conservatives.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
[...] the whole story on The Demographics of the Uninsured Related Topics : Health Insurancehealth [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
OK, now that I see the chart, how many of those “Americans” are actually Americans and not citizens of other countries?
As for Soros, the entire Democratic Party would practically cease to exist if he took up stamp collecting instead of funding anodynly-named groups, like the one that MattY works for. Without Soros, MattY would probably be saying, “nickel back”.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:24 am
If a universal system is good enough for grandma, it’s not clear why we’d view it as terrifying for the rest of us.
Exactly. This is what I fail to grasp about left-wing selling of single payer. Ask most older people – sure, they may grouse about some of medicare’s problems – but ask them to give it up and start paying full cost private insurance? No way.
Medicare is incredibly popular as a gov’t program. And quite efficient. And with supplemental insurance aspects, fairly flexible.
So why does the “socialized medicine” meme effectively shut down so many liberals????
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:00 am
[...] unrelated posts on Yglesias on the uninsured and changing Israeli [...]
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
Al, there is a common misconception that private health insurers work to keep health care costs down. There is a very big caveat to this.
Insurers have a lot of differences when it comes to co-payments, deductiibles and optional areas like dental. Where they are the same is in the coverage in accepted standards of care. While they press providers to get good prices for these standards, they don’t care what those standards are. As long as all of their competitors are playing by the same rules, they actually do better when these standards become more extravagant. As healthcare becomes more potentially ruinous to people, the value of insurance increases.
While private insurers have neither the power nor inclination to establish sensible standards of care, a single payer system would. It is not in the business of trying to maximize profit within a set of ground-rules. It is in business of changing the ground-rules in favor of it’s clientelle. The success of single-payer depends on services and cost, not profitability.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
[...] [h/t J.D.] From Matt Yglesias, we learn that the bulk of the uninsured are older than we think. [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
[...] What stands out in this chart of the age of uninsured individuals? Could it be the fact that almost nobody over 65 is uninsured? Do you think that’s a coincidence? Or just maybe is it because there is a government program to ensure that they are insured. [...]