But Now You Know

Who Are the 47 Million Uninsured?

EVERY TIME someone spouts the “forty seven million uninsured” number, show them this.

You routinely hear that claim in the health care debate, but, for some mind-boggling reason the opponents of nationalized health care rarely, if ever, stop to point out exactly WHO is being counted in that number.

When you’re deciding whether we should be forced to surrender our remaining medical freedom of choice to make coverage “universal”, consider who these “uninsured” actually are:

The Breakdown

The largest, overlapping, groups of uninsured in the US include:

• 9,000,000 Millionaires
• 27,000,000 people who make more than $50,000 per year, but choose not to get insurance
• 22,000,000 Young adults who can afford insurance, but choose not to
• 14,000,000 People who can already get medicaid, but choose not to
• 11,000,000 Illegal Immigrants
• 23,000,000 People who are actually insured. That’s right; you’ve been lied to…surprised?

This adds up to more than forty seven million, because of the overlap – for example young adults who are millionaires and change insurance companies fit into four categories, above.

Let’s check out the details:

Millionaires: The kind of health insurance you get from employers, these days, is actually pretty self-defeating…it makes you pay thousands of dollars per year, and in return you get tens of dollars worth of coverage on office visits and other routine care. The US has more millionaires than the rest of the world combined, and if you’re one, you’re not going to bother paying a premium every month, to avoid the much smaller annual checkup fee. Of the nine million millionaires, many wisely ditch routine health insurance entirely.

$50,000+: Of course this applies, to a lesser extent, to many people who make more than $50K, twenty seven million of whom choose to be ininsured. They don’t bother with health insurance, because they can pay for checkups out of pocket, no problem. Especially if they are…

Young Adults: Two thirds of the “uninsured” not skipping out on medicaid are between 18 and 34. Those people feel, and are statistically correct, that they’re probably not going to need the insurance, anyway. Why pay $2,000 per year for insurance when you’re going to go ten years without even getting a checkup, and have not a single ill effect from it? Sure, they’re risking the rare catastrophe…but it IS rare, and anyway that’s their own fault and choice.

Medicaid-Dodgers: If you get on medicaid, you have to pay some small token premium…but if you choose NOT to pay that premium, and then you actually get horribly ill, you can actually sign up on the spot and still get covered, having essentially gamed the system and won anyway. So why ANYONE would bother signing up ahead of time escapes me. Fourteen million are smart enough not to.

Illegals: I don’t like how restrictive our immigration laws are, but nonetheless they ARE among the few legitimate functions of the Federal government…and, more importantly, anyone in this country illegally is CHOOSING to live a life that will essentially make insurance impossible to legally get. There are about eleven million of these people, and “uninsured” surveys don’t filter them, in fact they sometimes specifically count them. That’s their own choice and problem. Legitimate taxpayers shouldn’t have to support them.

The Insured: In fact, the majority of the “uninsured” who aren’t gaming medicaid ARE INSURED ANYWAY. See, the fearmongers who came up with these deceptive numbers are including anyone who changes insurance companies in a given year as being unisured for that year. This is because, legally, there is some point (even if it’s only one instant at midnight) where you are covered by neither policy. Therefore, twenty three million of the “uninsured” are actually insured for almost the entire year.

COBRA Fakes Uninsurance

Under the category of “actually just switching insurance”, anyone who changes employers is automatically covered by COBRA…but it is retroactive. They can simply choose to be “uninsured” for up to two months, rather than paying prematurely for the COBRA, in case they get another job…if something goes wrong and they decide to “get” COBRA, it becomes retroactive for the entire two months. So they are counted as “uninsured”, but just like medicaid-qualified people, they actually ARE insured, just skating on the payments.

This really shows the depth of the “millions uninsured” scam, because it means that when COBRA was passed, more  people became insured (anyone who has lost a job, for at least two months), yet the COUNT of “uninsured” actually went up.

Who is Left Out

Of course the examples of who are supposedly uninsured are equally deceptive…usually the fearmongers spout off about old people and babies.

But, in fact, less than four percent of the elderly are “uninsured”, and of course 100% of those either are wealthy (the oldest fifth of Americans are the RICHEST fifth of Americans), or are covered by medicare/medicaid, since they’re…old. Either way, they just choose not to get insurance.

And, of course, ALL “children without health insurance” have parents who fall into the six categories above, or are directly covered by special plans for children. One hundred percent.

Who’s Actually Not Covered? Perhaps Nobody…

What’s more, in my effort to find a number for people who are actually uninsured, but NOT covered by medicaid, NOT making over fifty thousand per year, NOT choosing to ditch insurance because they are young and invulnerable, and NOT an illegal immigrant…I couldn’t find any, at all. The number is so small that it’s not even worth citing by the socialists, assuming it’s above zero in the first place.

Demand that they come up with an actual number, before we take them seriously on the claim that we surrender our remaining medical freedom in order to have “universal” coverage. Should we suffer the wait for treatment like Canada in order to save just five percent of the population from themselves? Two percent? One percent?

August 5, 2009 Posted by kazvorpal | Economy, Family, Health, Politics, Society | crisis, doctors, health care, insurance, medicine, pharmaceuticals, prescription drugs, public option, socialism | 32 Comments