Almost 4 Out of 10 Uninsured Americans Live in Households Making More Than $50,000 Per Year
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
According to this Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008” (released today), there were 46.34 million uninsured Americans in 2008, up from 45.6 million in 2007.
The chart above shows the household income levels of those 46.34 million uninsured Americans. There are 9.725 million uninsured Americans living in households making $75,000 per year or more, and this represents more than 1 out every 5 uninsured (21% of the total). There are about 8 million Americans without health insurance in households making between $50,000 and $75,000, representing 17.3% of the uninsured. With those two groups combined, 38.3% of Americans without health insurance (17.75 million people) lived in households with $50,000 or more of household income in 2007 (see Table 7 for these data).
Update: According to The Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance were $4,704 for single coverage ($392 per month) and $12,680 for family coverage in 2008 ($1,056 per month). And various individual Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are available in Michigan (other states may vary) starting at $173.18 per month for the My Blue plan, $52.82 per month for the Flexible Blue II plan, and $49.30 per month for the Young Adult Blue plan.
Q: With $50,000 or more in household income, wouldn’t many or most of those 17.75 million uninsured households be without insurance voluntarily? That is, couldn’t most of those households afford health insurance? Alternatively, with those income levels (especially the 9.725 million with household income above $75,000), couldn’t many of those households choose to forego health insurance in favor of being “self-insured,” at least for routine health procedures? Given the widespread availability of more than a thousand convenient and affordable retail health clinics around the country at Wal-Marts, Meijers, CVSs and Walgreens, these households could easily be on the “pay-as-you-go” model of self-insurance for health care, at least for routine medical services.
As for those uninsured Americans who are supposedly the reason for all this sound and fury, there is remarkably little interest in why they are uninsured, despite the incessant repetition of the fact that they are. The endless repetition serves a political purpose but digging into the underlying facts might undermine that purpose. Many find it sufficient to say that the uninsured cannot “afford” medical insurance. But what you can afford depends not only on how much money you have but also on what your priorities are. Many people who are uninsured have incomes from which medical insurance premiums could readily be paid without any undue strain (see chart above).
