In the context of our economic crisis, we’ve frequently noted how a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with about a 1.1 million person increase in the ranks of the uninsured. Since last December, the unemployment rate has risen by 2.8 percent, translating roughly to an additional 3.0 million more uninsured. The fact is one of many that makes the case for health reform stronger in light of our troubled economy.
In his latest column, Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO, Drew Altman, delivers an early holiday message that looks beyond the uninsured, to examine the economic crisis’ impact on the health of all Americans:
We don’t make the connection between employment data and health care often enough, but what numbers like these should signal is that many more Americans will have problems paying for health care and health insurance and delay or forego care while the economy rebounds. This is why we consistently see in our tracking polls that between 50% and 60% of the American people report that they or a family member have put off health care of one kind or another because of cost. As a field, we recognize the impact of unemployment on the number of uninsured, but the impact of weak labor markets on people’s ability to pay their health care bills is the broader and more politically telling effect.
But Altman doesn’t stop there, he goes on to examine health care’s impact on our society’s economic well-being:
We now need to do more to document the problems insured people are having as well paying their health care bills -- the impact not only on their access to care, but also on their overall economic security and their ability to buy food or clothes, pay the rent or the mortgage, pay for gas, or send a kid to college. It is health care tunnel vision simply to document impact on access to care because people experience the impact of health care costs on their family budgets more broadly.
Health reform isn’t just about expanding coverage to tens of millions of Americans. It’s about making health care affordable for all of us and strengthening the programs that help cushion the impact of the economic downturns we currently find ourselves in. That’s why proposals like the Freshman Cost Amendments are so important to the success of the final legislation, and why passing health reform this year is more important than ever.
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