Access To Health Insurance
The United States does not have universal health care or a system of socialized medicine. Health insurance may be provided as an employee benefit, while unemployed, part-time, and self-employed workers must often pay for their own insurance. As of 2001, 41.2 million people in the United States (14.6% of the US population) had no health insurance coverage, though a significant portion of those are in the U.S. without proper documentation. By 2004, this had risen to 45 million (15.6%). The U.S. Census Bureau attributed the drop primarily to the loss of employer-provided plans due to the economic downturn and a continuation of rising costs.
A recent Harvard University study found that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. The study found that many declaring bankruptcy were part of the middle class and were employed before they became ill, but had lost their health insurance by the time they declared bankruptcy. In the U.S., people leaving a job can continue with their former employer's health insurance plan under the COBRA at a rate that is usually double the rate the employee paid while employed. When an employer-insured person loses a job due to illness and does not have sufficient resources to continue to pay for COBRA health insurance, they also lose their coverage.
Efforts to provide universal health care in the 1960s and early 1990s floundered against widespread opposition by politicians who objected to government control of medicine and business groups which opposed further regulation of the healthcare and insurance industries. Despite a general consensus, codified in the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, that emergency care must be provided even to the indigent, it is not widely accepted in the United States that the availability of broader health care should be considered a right and paid for by public funds.
Read more about this topic: Economic Issues In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words access to, access, health and/or insurance:
“Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
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Stop up th access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“As they move into sharing parenting, men often are apprentices to women because they are not yet as skilled in child care. Mothers have to be willing to teach fathersboth by stepping in and showing and by stepping back and letting them learn.”
—Nancy Press Hawley. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Womens Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“Before I get through with you, you will have a clear case for divorce and so will my wife. Now, the first thing to do is arrange for a settlement. You take the children, your husband takes the house, Junior burns down the house, you take the insurance and I take you!”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, Will Johnstone, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Monkey Business, terms for a divorce settlement proposed while trying to woo Lucille Briggs (Thelma Todd)