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Here are few of the 'details' about exactly who the uninsured are. Please note that, unlike the media hysteria, there are a number of perspectives one must keep in mind:  many of the 'uninsured' are very healthy and neither need nor care for health insurance; many are relatively young, male & single; many already pay a considerable amount of money to retain their health, many are poor and have chronic illnesses and should be 'caught' in a Medicaid safety net. 

There are new papers focusing on the needs of the poor, and uninsured:

Options for Expanding Health Insurance for People with Chronic Conditions

Issue Brief No. 50, February 2002 Ha T. Tu, Marie C. Reed

s policy makers explore options such as tax credits and expansion of public programs to cover uninsured Americans, working-age adults with chronic conditions merit special attention. Because their medical needs are likely to be greater than healthy people’s, coverage expansion proposals that don’t factor in the greater need of people with chronic conditions are likely to fall short of reaching this vulnerable group. Often perceived primarily as a problem of the elderly, chronic conditions are widespread among working-age adults, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). This Issue Brief examines existing coverage sources for insured working-age people with chronic conditions and assesses how various coverage proposals might affect uninsured people with chronic conditions.

Chronic Conditions Among Working-Age Adults
Public Insurance Provides Safety Net for the Sickest
Employment Key to Coverage
Policy Implications of Proposed Coverage Expansions
Tax Credits, Individual Insurance and Chronic Conditions
Notes

This analyst tends to view the "uninsured" as composed of the above group at one pole, and those who are hyper-healthy or have no need for health insurance at the other extreme.  Government reports almost exclusively focus on the 'sick', and not the 'well', perhaps the report is simply a prelude to a demand for a new public program. The next examination of this issue MUST focus on both the well and the sick in Maine. 

From Maine's Blue Ribbon Task Force:

Maine’s Uninsured  .....This briefing paper was prepared by Anne Ruffner Edwards, October, 2000, for the  

Year 2000 Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care 

Maine’s uninsured have attracted much attention and represent, ironically, the worst about our health care system (why do we have so large a number of uninsured people) and the best (charity and philanthropic activities are meeting many of the needs of these populations). 

Besides the broad social context of its charge, the committee members needed to know the characteristics of Maine’s uninsured population.  We found out rather easily that 165,000 of Maine’s citizens are uninsured, but what were the characteristics of that group?  Younger workers playing the odds, for example?  Those who have worked their ways out of government-sponsored health insurance such as Medicaid, only to take low-wage jobs that do not offer health benefits?  The myriad skilled, independent tradespeople, craftspeople and professionals in the state who do not have employers to subsidize the costs of health insurance?  

Some of those answers we found in a report prepared by the Muskie School of Public Service for the MaineHealth Access Project, which profiled the uninsured under the age of 65 in Cumberland, Kennebec, and Lincoln counties.[1]  Although the study’s authors specifically do not extrapolate their results to all of Maine’s counties, the Commission believes that the report provides a useful representative sample from which we can draw some conclusions. 

Among the study’s findings: 

Seven percent of the currently insured population reported not having any kind of health insurance for six months or more within the last three years.
Thirty-four percent of the uninsured report never having had health insurance of any kind.
Seventy-one percent of uninsured adults are employed on a full or part-time basis.  In each of the three counties, firms with 25 or fewer employees are the primary employers of the uninsured.
Adults most likely to lack health insurance are between the ages of 19 and 34 years of age:  53 percent of them are male. 

Another study, by the Bureau of Health, provided additional information:[2]

 ·        With approximately 15.7 percent of its 18-64 population uninsured, Maine ranks 25th in the country, but highest in New England:  the next highest percentage of uninsured New Englanders is in New Hampshire, which has an uninsured percentage of 13.7.  

·        Forty percent of the uninsured earn between $10,000 and $$15,000 a year; five percent earn more than $50,000 annually. 

·        The percentage of uninsured Mainers has dropped from 1995’s 19.5 percent.

 National data, which can be extrapolated to Maine, round out our observations about the uninsured: 

·        Thirty percent of the uninsured do not fill prescriptions because of the cost.[3]

 ·        Uninsured women are 49 percent more likely to die in the four to seven years following a diagnosis of breast cancer than are insured women.[4] 

·        Uninsured individuals have a higher morbidity than insured persons, and are three times more likely to die in the hospital than the insured.[5]

 ·        In 1999, 300,00 of those filing for bankruptcy identified an illness or injury as a reason for filing.