The Good News: More People Have Health Coverage, The Bad News....

... is that more Americans have access to health care -- public "insurance" -- because their income was so low they qualified for government health programs.

It's the economy, reader. I imagine you find just as much irony in that as I do. In order to get public health payment assistance, your family's income has to be low enough. If you have a job and are earning enough money to keep food on your family's table, you may be preventing your family from being able to afford healthcare.

Here's how it worked: The weak economy caused the numbers of people who had no health payment coverage to fall from 47 million in 2006 to 45.7 million in 2007. Government programs increased the numbers of Americans covered for healthcare by 2.7 million people.

Notice that it doesn't add up? Explained another way -- had those government programs not been available, an additional 1.4 million people would have found themselves with no health coverage in 2007.

Further, the numbers of private uninsured are expected to rise further in 2008 because more jobs are being lost, and along with those jobs, private, employer provided health insurance.

Does this affect you? Absolutely it does -- whether you have health insurance or not. Because YOU are the one paying for those programs that provide access to the people who are not insured. Your state and federal taxes subsidize those programs, and you pay an additional $922 per year through the premiums you pay to private insurers.

Suppose you are in that gap area -- you are employed, you pay your taxes, your employer doesn't provide insurance -- but you make too much money to qualify for one of the subsidy programs. In that case you are paying for someone else's access, but you can't afford insurance yourself.

There is nothing fair or right about a system that creates this kind of dysfunction.
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