Numbers don’t lie

One of the things Republicans like to say when they argue that we can’t afford health care for everyone is, “Numbers don’t lie.”

Well, here’s a number for you: Official estimates by the US Census Bureau say that 49.9 million Americans now are uninsured, an incerase of about a million people from a year ago.

Statistics say that translates to about 5,000 more premature deaths every year, bringing the likely total to about 50,000 Americans.

“That’s one plane crash every day,” says Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Plan. “It’s the equivelent of another 9/11 every month.”

Most people are unaware of these numbers because they rely on the corporate media for information, Flowers says, and I agree with her. Instead of getting the truth, we get distractions and misrepresentations leading most Americans to believe we can’t afford health care for everyone.

For example, in Monday’s debate, Wolf Blitzer’s “hypothetical” man chose not to pay $200 a month for insurance. I don’t know anyone whose insurance costs are that low unless they have huge deductibles — $10,000 and more — and co-pays. Almost two-thirds of Americans don’t even have $1,000 to lay out for an emergency at any given time, so I don’t imagine our “hypothetical” man is being cavalier in making his decision.

“The number of young people who can afford insurance and choose not to get it is very, very small,” Flowers said. “If you have these huge deductibles and co-pays, you’re going to go bankrupt if you get sick. So of you’re going to go bankrupt anyway, why shell out hundreds of dollars every month to a big corporation?”

So, Wolf Blitzer’s example is misleading to begin with, although you won’t get that information on CNN.

The money we’re spending on wars and the money we’re not taking in from the wealthiest Americans and corporations would more than pay for Medicare for every American. Instead, we tell people we can’t afford it and 50,000 people die every year — one every 11 minutes.

“It seems to me that’s morally reprehensible,” Flowers said.

So, here are a few of the true numbers you probably don’t know:

  • TheCensus Bureau says 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
  • In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is supposed to be the model for the Affordable Care Act, 370,000 people were uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
  • Some states saw more than a 3-percentage-point to 5-percentage-point increase in their uninsured rate (Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and South Carolina). In terms of absolute numbers, Louisiana had the largest increase in the number of uninsured, 240,700, followed by New York (177,700) and South Carolina (173,300).
  • Among various population groups, the greatest loss of coverage was among working-age adults ages 35 to 64, people with incomes below $49,999, and people with disabilities.
  • Latinos continue to  face uninsurance disproportionately (30.7 percent), compared with blacks (20.8 percent), Asians (18.1 percent) and non-Latino whites (11.7 percent).
  • About 7.3 million children remain uninsured. Young people ages 19 to 25 had a drop of 1.6 percentage points in their uninsurance rate, a figure likely linked to the federal health law’s provision that allows dependent children to be covered under a parent’s health plan up to age 26.

I suggest you print this out and show it around. It’s what corporate America doesn’t want people to know.

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