Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Those Shifting Number Of Uninsured

President Obama and Democratic supporters of his health care reform plan had been citing 46 million as the number of uninsured Americans. Last week, Obama lowered that number to 30 million during his joint address to Congress. Today, the White House released new estimates once again pegging the number at more than 46 million. A statement released by the White House today reads:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today released a new analysis of last week’s U.S. Census numbers regarding the uninsured. The results are sobering and confirm that health insurance reform cannot wait another year. Nationwide, the number of uninsured increased from 39.8 million in 2001 to 46.3 million in 2008.

“These numbers only serve to further confirm a reality that far too many American families live with every day,” said Secretary Sebelius. “Our health care system has reached a breaking point. The status quo is unsustainable, and continuing to delay reform is not an option.”
According to the White House statement, the percentage of uninsured, non-elderly adults in Indiana has increased to 17.4%, or 772,000. If the government can't forgure out how many uninsured people there are from week to week, how does it expect us to trust it with running the health care system? And more importantly, that we can trust the government to keep Obama's promise of not adding a single dime to the federal government's deficit?

1 comment:

bobisimo said...

The numbers have shifted on account of who is being counted. Obama's lower number is a more conservative (and accurate) total of citizens without insurance; and as he said, non-citizens aren't eligible.

I believe the higher totals reference the entire US population. Makes no sense that they would acknowledge those totals other than for inflammatory purposes, but their propaganda has little relation to reform quality.

Regardless... 30 million? 45 million? 5 million? I don't like the course that the current reform is taking, but millions of uninsured and a non-sustainable health care system are both serious problems that need to be addressed.

By the way, one plan is government run, assuming it passes -- which is looking iffy. Health care is not government run, nor would it be under the proposals currently in place.