The high costs of medical care led 41 percent of Americans to forgo necessary treatments or medications in 2010, according to the Commonwealth Fund‘s latest health insurance survey.
The biennial survey also found:
- 40 percent of respondents said they had struggled to pay medical bills in 2010.
- More than half (57 percent) of the respondents who had lost their medical coverage as a result of becoming unemployed remained uninsured. Only 25 percent of unemployed respondents found alternate coverage or were able to join their spouse’s insurance, and just 14 percent remained covered through COBRA.
- 32 percent spent more than 10 percent of their income on health care-related costs, including out-of-pocket expenses and premiums, up from 21 percent in 2001. Half of all respondents falling under the federal poverty line spent at least 10 percent of their incomes on health-related costs.
- 28 percent of all respondents were without insurance at some point during 2010. Extrapolated nationally, that percentage translates to 52 million uninsured Americans.
Overall, the report presents a picture of a country in which “health insurance became less affordable and health care more costly over the last decade — particularly for working families with modest incomes, who increasingly devoted a large share of their income to health care,” said Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., a vice president of the Commonwealth Fund and one of the authors of the survey.
PHI’s FACTS 3 analysis of the direct-care workforce (pdf) found that an estimated 900,000 direct-care workers went without health insurance coverage during 2009, and that the prevalence of employer-sponsored coverage has declined significantly.
Health Reform Will Reduce Burden
The Commonwealth Fund’s report points out that the Affordable Care Act will gradually relieve the burden of exorbitant health care costs and high uninsurance rates.
Under the health reform law, most Americans will be required to obtain health insurance by 2014, the year the law takes full effect. Americans with low and moderate incomes will be eligible for Medicaid or to purchase subsidized coverage from an insurance exchange.
“As the law’s provisions go into effect, the nation’s health insurance system will move from one in which 52 million adults suffered a time uninsured in 2010 to one in which few people will be without health insurance, even during a recession,” wrote the authors of the Commonwealth Fund report.
The Commonwealth Fund survey evaluated responses from more than 3,000 Americans between the ages of 19 and 64.
– by Matthew Ozga
