Document Type

Newsletter

Publication Date

7-2010

Issue

Number 3, 2010

Description

The status of our nation’s healthcare system has received a considerable amount of attention, particularly over the past two years. One of the most commonly cited areas of concern among stakeholders, such as the Kaiser Foundation, is the number of uninsured individuals nationwide.
In 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation stated that the percentage of employers providing health insurance decreased from 69% to 60% (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2008). Kaiser cited increasing premiums as a primary cause of health coverage being dropped. The Kaiser Foundation added that the uninsured “are four times more likely to delay or forgo needed care” than are those individuals with insurance (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2008).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a website (http://www.cdc.gov/Features/Uninsured/) that summarizes the nation’s uninsured situation. This website reports that the uninsured visit emergency rooms twice as often as those who are insured. In addition, the website reports that data from 2006 indicate that 43.6 million Americans, nearly 15 percent of all Americans, lack health insurance. One source to use to find how those numbers compare with South Dakota’s is the Census Bureau’s Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE).

Pages

8

Format

application/pdf

Publisher

South Dakota State University

Language

en

Download

Share

COinS