Crib Sheet: Affordable Health Coverage for All

Health insurance is like Brussels sprouts – it’s mysterious, unappealing, and associated with your parents. Unfortunately, for the almost 30 percent of us who don’t have it, mom and dad are right on this one. Health insurance is good for you. Too bad this administration doesn’t care.

Just last year, the nonpartisan Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, urged policymakers to come up with a plan for universal insurance, calling the lack of health insurance deadly, costly, and a source of insecurity even for the insured. And yet, President Bush and his friends in Congress remain silent on the issue, preferring to put forward tepid, ineffectual proposals that tinker at the edges of the problem. What’s going on?

You need health insurance. About 25 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds visit the ER annually. Without insurance, a single visit can cost thousands of dollars. Almost 2,000 uninsured young adults die each year because they didn’t get proper medical care. Especially because young adults are particularly at risk for HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and injuries, we all need regular preventative care, which can be incredibly expensive or even denied to you without insurance. And when uninsured individuals do receive care, they are likely to be treated worse than those who have health insurance.

The current system is unsustainable… Currently, 45 million Americans lack any health insurance. Many of those work full- or part-time. Millions more Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their insurance. Experts estimate that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths each year in the United States.

...and expensive. Beyond the death toll that results from widespread lack of insurance coverage, billions and billions of dollars in “uncompensated” care costs are placed on and passed through the health system. These costs are borne by everyone, in the form of higher insurance premiums for those who are insured and higher taxpayer costs to support safety net providers.

Young adults are disproportionately uninsured. Young adults are the age group most likely not to have health insurance. In fact, nearly two of five college graduates and one-half of high school graduates who do not go on to college will endure a time without health insurance in the first year after graduation. And if past trends continue, two-thirds of all young adults currently aged 18 to 23 are likely to lack insurance at some point in the next four years.

So we go without care. Without health insurance, young adults are the age group most likely to have “no regular source of health care.” The lack of health insurance among young adults leads to dangerous delays in treatment; the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey showed that over half of uninsured young adults went without needed health care because of cost. If they do get care, the resulting bills are crushing and can plunge an already cash-strapped recent graduate into bankruptcy, affecting their finances for the rest of their lives.

But while conservatives would like to blame the “irresponsibility” of young adults and others who choose not to purchase insurance, the reality is no affordable options exist. In 2004, job-based health insurance premiums reached an average of $3,695 annually for individual coverage ($308 per month). If you can’t get insurance through your job, most people turn to individual insurance. It may look affordable, but it often provides less protection with a hefty price tag. For example, Tonik, Blue Cross of California’s new health insurance plan marketed to young adults, offers an ‘affordable’ option with monthly premiums of $64, $73, or $80. However, these premiums are coupled with incredibly high deductibles of $1,500, $3,000 or $5,000, depending on the plan. In other words, the insurance company won’t cover a penny of your health care bills until you have paid thousands of dollars – on top of your monthly premiums! For the vast majority of young adults, these plans are simply unaffordable.

Conservatives are offering no real solutions. Instead, they are talking about health savings accounts, another scheme which favors the healthy and wealthy and leaves the working poor and chronically ill to carry a greater financial burden.

There is another way. The Center for American Progress has a bold but practical proposal to guarantee an American right to affordable, quality health coverage. Click here for more information on the Plan for a Healthy America.

Related Stories

• Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton
• Campaign Communications Director, Repower America
• Toke Up Marijuana Laws
• Send a Health Care E-Card
• The Battle for Pittsburgh