Friday, August 8, 2008

Getting to Know the Uninsured

By Grace-Marie Turner

Categories: Care Without Insurance, How Many Uninsured?, Insurance Regulation

In Tom Miller's detailed AEI analysis of trends in the number of Americans without health insurance, he says the broader issue of slowly-declining rates of insurance coverage in the United States remains more a chronic condition (needing better diagnosis and more than one kind of treatment) than a crisis (needing emergency surgery).

Universal mandates to purchase coverage won't work as long as people can't afford it, taxpayers won't subsidize it any more than they already do, and politicians won't enforce unpopular rules to buy it anyway, writes Miller.

Reversing decades of overregulation, mistargeted tax subsidies, and lack of transparency in the health care sector would not solve all problems, but it sure would help.