About the Uninsured

Many of Us are Only One Step From Being Uninsured

We already have a system of "universal access" to health care – it's called the emergency room. When Oregonians without coverage need care, that's where they go – often when they are very sick – and where the cost of care is much higher. We can provide non-emergency care in a more cost effective, efficient way that allows the staff of our emergency rooms to do what they are trained to do – respond to real emergencies.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau

• 47 million people in the U.S. – almost one in seven Americans – were uninsured in 2005.

• Almost eight out of 10 of the uninsured are in working families

The uninsured don’t fit a media stereotype. They come from every community, every neighborhood and every income level. A person may have coverage today and none at all tomorrow due to a job loss, a drop or reduction in work-based health coverage, a change in family status, or the death of the primary insurance holder. What would happen if you lost access to affordable health care for you and your family? The inability to pay a medical bill is the second leading cause of personal bankruptcy; second only to job loss.

Of those without insurance:

• 60% reported problems paying medical bills.
• 27% reported struggling to pay expenses such as food, rent or heat.
• Almost half (44%) said that they were forced to use most or all of their savings to pay medical bills.
• 20% had run up large credit card debts or taken out a home equity loan to pay medical expenses.

• People without insurance use the most expensive source of care when they need it – the emergency room – which adds unnecessary costs to the health system.
• The cost of care for the uninsured is shifted to people with insurance, in the form of higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
• Through this cost shift, the average person with insurance pays about $100 per month to cover the cost of care for the uninsured.
• Employers, faced with those higher premium costs, are facing the difficult decision of either passing on the costs to employees, eliminating coverage for dependents, or eliminating work-based coverage altogether.

The current structure of the US health care system results in higher taxes, lower wages, increased health care costs and, often the inability to get timely access to needed care. We have "universal access" but only through the emergency room, which is both expensive and inefficient.

We Can Do Better. Together we can create a rational system that is fair, affordable and accessible. Join us in designing health care for the 21st Century.

(See the attachment below for a fact sheet describing the top ten myths about the unisnured, prepared in 2005 by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured)

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