Shortsighted States Are Putting Health Care on the Chopping Block
Ronald Brownstein

December 22, 2003

The number of Americans without health insurance now equals the population of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and North Carolina combined. From 2000 through 2002 alone, the number of uninsured Americans jumped by nearly 4 million, to 43.5 million overall. Today almost one in six Americans lacks health insurance.

And the problem is about to get worse.

Americans obtain health insurance from two principal sources: employers and government programs. Employers provide most of the coverage, but they are retrenching under pressure from double-digit increases in health-insurance premiums.

The share of Americans receiving health coverage from their employers has declined in each of the last two years, as higher premiums encourage businesses to either pass on more of the bill to their workers (which means fewer buy insurance) or drop coverage altogether.

The only reason the number of Americans without insurance hasn't increased even faster is that public programs, like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, are providing coverage to nearly 4 million more people today than in 2000, many of them children.

But now the public programs are facing debilitating cutbacks too. And the result will be a continuing rise in the number of uninsured Americans — even if the recovering economy slows the loss of health insurance on the job.