Uninsured ranks are predicted to jump

Job loss and growth in health spending that outstrips income are identified as the culprits.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews staff. Dec. 10, 2001.

Washington -- Two reports released in November offer new predictions that the number of uninsured Americans is about to start rising significantly, both over the short term and over the next decade.

In the near term, the surge in unemployment since the Sept. 11 attacks is likely to cause a sharp spike in the number of Americans who lose their health insurance, says a report released Nov. 13 by the Commonwealth Fund.

"This nation faces an immediate challenge: an increase in the number of the uninsured at a time when prompt access to health care services is crucial for all Americans," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.4% in October, the largest one-month increase in 21 years. The figure could rise as high as 7.6% in 2003, according to private analysts.

The higher the unemployment rate, the higher the number of uninsured, notes the report, written by Jeanne Lambrew, PhD, an associate professor of health policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a former Clinton administration health policy analyst.

More than one in three workers who lose their jobs lose their health insurance as well. Currently, 37% of unemployed adults are uninsured, compared with 18% of all adults.

Unemployment also puts children at risk of losing coverage, the report notes. Seventeen percent of children with unemployed parents were uninsured in 2000, compared with 12% of all children.

Several lawmakers and public policy experts have issued dire warnings that Congress needs to provide targeted health coverage assistance to the unemployed this year to stave off a dramatic rise in the uninsured. [...]