Lack of health insurance is increasingly becoming a problem for Americans with moderate annual incomes of $20,000 to $40,000, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s Biennial Health Insurance survey of 4,350 adults. Although 53% of adults with incomes of less than $20,000 are uninsured, 41% of Americans who earn up to $40,000 are uninsured, up from 28% of uninsured moderate-income earners in 2001. The survey also found that 67% of adults who were uninsured last year were working or had a family member who was employed. Paying medical bills was a significant problem for more than half of all respondents. Fifty-one percent of uninsured adults said they had medical debt, and 49% had depleted their savings to pay medical bills. Among the uninsured with incomes above $40,000, 59% said they had medical debt.
According to the survey report, Gaps in Health Insurance: An All-American Problem, the uninsured respondents with chronic conditions also reported hospitalizations and emergency department use at a rate of two times higher than that of insured people with chronic health problems, and 59% had lower compliance with medication regimens because of inability to afford prescription drugs. The medical care that the uninsured did receive was lacking in preventive care--only 18% of uninsured adults over 50 received a colon cancer screen in the past five years and only 48% of women received a mammogram in the past two years--and was inefficient, with 19% reporting that they were given duplicate medical tests. Read the executive summary.
