More Americans Had Health Insurance In 2007
Tuesday Aug 26, 2008More Americans Had Health Insurance In 2007 in Individual Health Insurance
In
2007, many health care experts had expected the number of uninsured Americans
to increase for the seventh straight year, reported CNN.
But much to their surprise, the amount of uninsured Americans went down.
According to the Census Bureau, 45.7 million people in the U.S. had no health insurance in 2007, which is 1.3 million less than 2006.
What is the reason for the decrease?
The CNN article points to increased enrollment in government health care programs including the State’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid.
Roughly 600,000 more children had health insurance in 2007 than 2006 and Medicaid enrollment went up by 13.2 percent in the same period.
The Census Bureau also found that the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance or individual health insurance dipped slightly.
So the report says that there are more people with government health care and fewer with private insurance.
Is this good news for expanding government health insurance programs?
Private Insurance is either group or individual. Everyone knows the group market is shrinking, but what about the individual market. With all the discussion about trying to strengthen the group market, or the individual market, it would be interesting to see the numbers if they are available.
Posted by Alan on August 27, 2008 at 09:50 AM CDT #