Individual Health Insurance
In the past, a majority of the working population received their individual health insurance benefits through their employers, but the current recession has left many people uninsured or even worse uninsured AND unemployed. Statistics show that approximately four million American workers have lost their health insurance during the current recession, but only half of them have found an insurance alternative. Apart from the recession, there has been a trend in telecommuting, subcontracting, and self-employment that has created a large need for more practical private individual health insurance plans. Combine these two sectors, and you’re looking at a large slice of the country’s uninsured non-elderly citizens, a demographic that represents roughly 45 million people.
Private individual health insurance poses a two-part problem for the uninsured working class. First, with only half of the adult insured population visiting a doctor at least once during their insurance term, and barely a third visiting the dentist, insurance payments may seem like an unnecessary expense at a time when the slow economy is putting the squeeze on most people’s budgets. Second, as more businesses cut insurance benefits workers are having to choose between overpriced individual health insurance plans or no insurance at all. When it means a significant increase in their regular wages, most of the working class choose the latter.
Unfortunately, government-funded health insurance programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program fail to fill the gap when it comes to working age middle class citizens in need of individual health insurance. While President Obama’s pre-election health care plan proposal would have covered such individuals, that plan has since been nixed with no immediate government plans for assisting this demographic.
Since this demographic as a whole is still relatively young and healthy (even without insurance), it’s easy for members of this group to feel that health insurance is optional and not a necessity. This mentality is detrimental not only to the individuals themselves but to the country as a whole which must assume the unpaid medical debts of uninsured workers that unexpectedly found themselves in an emergency situation. Add to that unemployment and/or disability costs for injured workers, and it’s clear the country has a problem on its hands. Before long, these same uninsured workers will also face a big problem when they start experiencing the medical problems that result from long-term negligence. As they near retirement, individual Medicare insurance will no longer seem optional, but they’ll find it much harder to qualify for and afford the services they once so readily shunned.
With the recession holding steady and insurance costs increasing faster than wages, uninsured rates among the middle class are expected to rise dramatically despite declines in 2006 and 2007. Many individuals facing the possibility of losing their insurance benefits feel helpless, but a handful of private insurance groups have recognized the demand for affordable individual health insurance, and new programs and plans are being developed and offered on a regular basis.
In: Insurance · Tagged with: Health, Individual, Insurance
