Medical Insurance Becomes Futile

More than 25 million Americans with health insurance were unable to afford sufficient medical care last year, according to a new study released on Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund. The number of such people has risen sharply and is up 60 percent from 16 million in 2003.

One in every five adults, under the age of 65, fell short of coverage last year and received deficient screening from financial destitution on landing in the hospital.

Such under insured people include working Americans whose employers do not grant health insurance so they have to buy it on their own, or who have jobs that offer only catastrophic plans with high co-payments and deductibles in the thousands of dollars.

“We’re moving in a direction where you can be insured all year and still face medical bankruptcy,” said Cathy Schoen, the study’s lead author and a senior vice president for research and evaluation at the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation in New York specializing in health research.

Worst victims were the families with middle and higher incomes, those whose income was 200 percent above the federal poverty level or those with an annual income of $40,000 or more.

"Insurance coverage is the ticket into the health-care system," said Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund, during a teleconference. "For too many, that ticket does not buy financial security or genuine access to care.

"We need to extend effective, affordable health insurance to all," he added. "Shifting costs to patients is not an equitable or effective solution to rising health-care costs. It is time for serious consideration of changes in the way we pay for and deliver health services. Ultimately, we need a national solution to the problem of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans."

It is the relentless rise in the costs of medical care, combined with a mounting number of insurance plans that has burdened the patients, requiring them to pay a higher fraction of their medical bills.

The study, to be published by the medical policy journal Health Affairs, also found that under insured Americans are now acting more like the nation's 47 million uninsured: They're likely to abstain from recommended medical care owing to the fear that they won't be able to pay for it.

“This erosion of insurance protection is putting patients, families and the nation's health and economic security at risk,” said Schoen.