So, no more uninsured people go to the ER than insured people? And that means that the uninsured people fishing for narcotics aren't the problem? I think the author jumped from point A, to point B, too quickly.

The question posed was whether it was the fault of the uninsured people showing up at ERs that was driving up insurance costs to all of us. Well, it sure isn't the insured people showing up and sticking hospitals with the bill that's doing it.

Question: of the 47 million or so people who don't have insurance, how many people are uninsured by choice? In other words (and if you'll Google "uninsured by choice" you can confirm this), most of the uninsured who show up at ERs could have bought insurance...but they choose not to. They'd rather spend their money on newer cars, better TVs, more entertainment...whatever. It's a stretch to say that these people aren't having a significant impact on our system.

I understand that the author wanted to make a larger point, but they failed to get the facts right, so whatever came after that is rather pointless.

LOL Good to see at least one other critical thinker on here! By his own reasoning, UNinsured are at least HALF the problem, yet the author spends no time addressing that issue. Given that, he is right, most of the insured who use the ER do so for convenience and relatively low price. However, i can tell you that here in the Great State of Calif the ERs are loaded with uninsured!

Well, I don't know what the cost of an ER visit is in California but in my area it is $125.00. Now my co-pay for a doctor's visit is $20.00 and even if I have to go twice it still would be cheaper than going to the ER for a non emergency. Yeah, it might be convenient to go to the ER for every little ailment that you might have but if I'm not admitted my insurance does not cover the ER fee. Even if some insurance companies will pay the ER fee many of them will not pay it if they don't consider it a real emergency.

I am sure that many of the uninsured in your area are also illegal immigrants.

no one is stupid enough to say "I'm here for my headache because I don't want to wait at Dr. Becker's office". They say "I'm here for a headache, and I fell down... could I be bleeding in my head?" Instant emergency visit (covered), instant big workup - expensive.

Fax me beer: "Question: of the 47 million or so people who don't have insurance, how many people are uninsured by choice? In other words (and if you'll Google "uninsured by choice" you can confirm this), most of the uninsured who show up at ERs could have bought insurance...but they choose not to."

People are not "uninsured by choice" The website you mention is already biased in its title. Individual health insurance cost as much or more than a mortgage, and in addition, insurance companies wont insure you if you have a chronic illness. Individual health insurance is beyond the reach of middle class families, and the number of uninsured are growing daily because many employers can no longer afford to insure their employees either. For most of them the ER is the place of last resort. I don't know where other posters got their figures who wrote that an ER visit costs about $120? My experience is that a visit to the ER comes to at least $500 or more (you have to pay for all those tests in addition to the visit).

Our health care system would be much more effective and cost less if everyone had access to health care, and thus prevention. The way MDs are now controlled in the US by private insurance companies and their non-medical employees charged solely with cutting expenses and making profit for their upper management and shareholders is shameful. No doctor in Canada or Europe would put up with this in their own system of universal insurance. Doctors in those systems along with their patients who support them have a much greater political clout than they do here. This is paradoxical because American doctors in the past have resisted such a system in order to maintain their independance, but instead they have become glogs in the insurance companies machinery, so they are now in support of a different way of practicing medicine.

Incidentally, the fact that so many of us have no access to health care until we get very ill doesn't bode well for what would happen not if but when an epidemic hits our country. The epidemic might already have been spreading around for months before public health officials become aware of it, and by then it might be too late to protect even the insured part of the population. Of course this is a doomsday scenario and I hope it never happens, but we need to remember that illness is very democratic and we cant fight it unless we look out for each other

FMB--you have GOT to be kidding me! Nobody is "uninsured by choice" unless they are 19 years old and stupid! After I got laid off a few months ago, I took the first job I could find--a lower paying job farther away just so that I could get the employer subsidized health care. COBRA is a joke! Lets see--I'm living on unemployment, and now I have to pay the Robber Barons..er, Insurance Companies....$450 a month of my REDUCED INCOME in order to stay insured in ase of an emergency!

Even if I was fully employed, making what I was making before, paying that kind of money would be a stretch. It would be easier not to pay it--until something catastrophic happens, like a car accident. The system we have now has a built in disincentive against preventative care, because the less you use it, the more money the Insurer makes. However, a population with poor preventative care is an overall sicker population, just like the previous poster pointed out.

Let's start by not being alarmist liars. I didn't cite a website at all...I suggested a Google search that would have taken you to a study which breaks down, in detail, who the uninsured are and why they lack insurance.

For you to say that "nobody is uninsured by choice" shows a great ability to make huge logical leaps on your part. I've personally been uninsured by choice, all through my 20s, not because I couldn't afford insurance, but because I didn't feel that the chances of my needing it justified my spending money for it. My experience is shown to be pretty standard for people under 35...many of us choose to do without insurance, because we'd rather spend our money on something else.

You might say that's a bad decision. Be that as it may, it is a choice for many millions of Americans. One that you have no right to take away by creating a taxpayer funded insurance plan to force people who don't want insurance to pay for it anyway through taxation.

Because you obviously have no idea who the uninsured are. Sheep.

"One that you have no right to take away by creating a taxpayer funded insurance plan to force people who don't want insurance to pay for it anyway through taxation."

Perhaps the answer would be then to have a taxpayer funded insurance plan from which you could opt out and get a credit on your tax bill. In return you would not be eligible for any medical care whatsoever that you could not cover out-of-pocket or that was not covered by something such as workers comp or by auto insurance (yours or the other driver's) in the event of an accident. Let me repeat that: you would not be able to obtain ANY medical care that you could not pay for. No charity payments, no unreimbursed treatment from doctors, hospitals, or clinics. None. And, if you had a spouse and/or children who need for medical care was based on your tax payments (obviously likely for children, less so for a spouse), the would fall under the same policy as you. At the point when you decided that you did want to be covered, say, you realize you're getting older and the likelihood of needing medical care is increasing or you suspect you have a medical condition that you will not be able to afford care for, you may rejoin the tax-based system with a premium added for every year that you refused to contribute to the health care pool. How would that be?

Your "solution" still assumes a problem. However, I'd argue that there is such a small percentage of people who actually lack access to coverage (either because of an inability to pay, or pre-existing conditions) that to create a national health care system to serve them is like killing a fly with a nuclear bomb.

Don't take that to mean that I discount the logic of having an opt-out provision in just about any social safety net program (let's do the same for Social Security, Medicaid...etc.), I like the idea of choice in government programs. If we must have a government program for health insurance because the myth exists (perpetuated by the Liberals and their media) that some 20% of the population has no access to health insurance, then we should certainly have a plan that looks like yours.

Although, you'd quickly find that the same people who currently choose not to have insurance would choose not to pay in to the government program; further, with a lack of full participation, the costs would be prohibitive, since only people who needed insurance would buy it. Insurance (government or private) needs people who won't use it for it to work. The healthy subsidize the sick.

Of course, your plan of preventing people from using charities, etc., is unworkable. You certainly can't stop a doctor from giving their labor and skills away. You can't stop Catholic Charities from doing the work of God for people who make bad decisions (or miscalculate the risks).

A better plan, one that has been proven to work quite well, is to allow people who want insurance to buy insurance in the market. Those who don't want to buy insurance are risking their ability to recieve all but stabilizing treatment in the case of emergency. Those who choose to forego insurance, and still receive care, will find themselves in debt to the hospitals, and the target of lawsuits and garnishments. Of course, millions of such people will also not need more than routine care which they will pay for and go about their business.

One more quick point: lenders generally do not consider unpaid medical bills as negative when making lending decisions, even for major purchases like homes. If lenders simply treated medical bills like any other, you'd see fewer people with unpaid medical bills. Right now, one can more-or-less ignore billings from hospitals, and will generally not have much to fear for their freeloading.

The medical insurance that my husband and I currently have through his employer costs $6,600 a year. That’s for a group plan covering “employee and spouse” and doesn’t include any children. It’s a decent plan but not gold-plated by any means. In the neighboring state of Ohio, the average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance for an employee and family was $11,636 in 2007. Now remember, these are group plans. Although individual insurance plans may cost less for those who are young and healthy, most of the time an individual plan will cost more than a group plan.

Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, in the U.S. in 2007 the median annual household income was $50,233.

How much below that $50,000 level do you have to go before $11,636 becomes prohibitively expensive? Before even the $6,600 will be an expense that some couples can’t handle?

And all that assumes that the family in question can even find individual coverage at the “best” price. Try having a pre-existing condition. When I needed to purchase insurance for myself when I was in my 30s, the price of the policy went up because I had been treated for asthma in the preceding five years. However, in spite of the increase in premium, the policy excluded treatment for _any_ lung-related problems for the initial two years of coverage.

I guess I just don’t understand the selfishness and arrogance of people like Fax. It’s clear that Fax would opt out of any government health insurance program if such a thing were possible, but it’s also clear that he knows that the rest of society is not nearly so callous and self-centered as he is. If, in spite of his belief in his own invulnerability, Fax were to become ill or suffer an accident at a point in his life where he did not have insurance and was unable to pay out of pocket for his health care (of course, that would never happen to HIM—he’s too smart and too healthy and just too all around superior to lesser beings who sometimes find themselves in difficult circumstances), he believes that he could rely on the charitable impulses of others. Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that he has demonstrated how little the well-being of anyone else matters to him, he’s probably right.

Although I do wonder about how smart he is. After all, he seems to think that people suffer no adverse consequences if they are unable to pay their health care bills. But, in actuality, unpaid medical bills do carry consequences. Hospitals and other health care providers sue over unpaid bills. They turn them over to collection agencies. These debts can indeed show up on credit reports and are NOT be ignored by lenders. And beyond that, if not paying medical bills is so risk free, then why do so many people end up filing for bankruptcy because of health care bills they are unable to pay?

And finally, why do we in the U.S. pay almost double what Canada pays per capita for health insurance but have a higher infant mortality rate, a lower life expectancy, and 46 million people without insurance? Without getting into an argument about the shortcomings of the Canadian system, I think it’s easy to see that we could certainly be doing something better than we’re doing now for all that money.

You don't know anything, at all. You have feelings. You feel like I'm mean, and you feel like 47 million people don't have insurance, and you feel like lenders consider medical bills when making credit decisions. But, you don't actually know anything. You don't know why 47 million lack insurance, nor do you care. If you don't know that basic fact, then all of your other pontifications are meaningless, and revealing of your lack of intellectual fortitude.

By the way, I have health insurance. I said I didn't carry it throughout my 20s, because I didn't need it. I was correct, and so are millions of other Americans who don't need you to babyset them.