HEALTH CARE FACT SHEET

Why the Uninsured and Underinsured are EVERYONES’ concern:

Everybody Pays:

• Uncompensated care for the uninsured in the US in 2001 cost $35 billion. ¹
• Taxpayers and those who have insurance share the burden of paying the bills of the uninsured in order to keep open the hospitals we ALL use.
• Premiums for employer sponsored health insurance rose at about five times the rate of inflation and worker’s earnings since 2000. ²
• Because the uninsured rely more on the emergency room we ALL wait longer when we go to the ER.
• Prescription drugs cost almost twice as much in the U.S. as in other advanced nations.
• The uninsured use fewer preventive visits and are more susceptible to preventable health problems.
• The Uninsured earn 10-30% less due to poorer health and effects such as missed days of work, etc.
• Businesses increasingly shift health to employees, and more employees cannot afford it, which increases the number of uninsured.

How much America Spends on Health Care:

• Total U.S. spending on health care in 2004 is expected to reach $1.8 trillion, 15.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (the highest in the world), or $6,167 per person. ³
• The CEOs of the nation’s 11 largest for-profit Medicare HMOs received an average salary of $15.1 million in 2002 (not including unexercised stock options). ⁴
• In 2000 the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the U.S. 37th in the world for overall performance of its health care system and 54th for fairness of its health care financing system. ⁵

Facts on Health Coverage in the U.S.

• One in six Americans under the age of 65 lacks health insurance on any given day of the year.
• Nearly one third of Americans have gone without health insurance for at least one month in the last two years.
• If your income is less than $60,000 a year, you have nearly 1:3 chance of going without insurance.
• One third of Hispanic-Americans and one fifth of African-Americans lack health insurance all year

What is Keeping Costs High and Access to Care Low?

• In 2003, the drug lobby paid 637 lobbyists; more than one for every member of Congress, to make sure it got what it wanted in the Medicare drug bill. And they did!
• The CEOs of the nation’s 11 largest for-profit Medicare HMOs received an average salary of $15.1 million in 2002 (not including unexercised stock options) ⁶.
• 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 reported $35.9 billion in profits in 2002, more than half of the total of $69.6 billion in profits of the entire Fortune 500 ⁷.
• More than one in five health care dollars goes to paperwork rather than direct care in the U.S., making U.S. health insurance one of the most complex and confusing in the world.
  

¹ Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Covering the uninsured. How much would it cost? June 2003.
² The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, “Employer Health Benefits, 2004 Annual Survey,” Copyright © 2004 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, California, and Health Research and Educational Trust, Chicago, Illinois. All rights reserved. Available at: http://www.kff.org/insurance/7148/ , accessed September 12, 2004.
³ Heffler et al., Health Affairs, 2/11/04.
⁴ Families USA, June 2003.
⁵WHO. World Health Organization Assesses The World's Health Systems. Press Release WHO/44, June 21, 2000
⁶ Families USA, June 2003.
⁷ Public Citizen, 6/23/03.