Why people don’t have health insurance
Jim B. raised an interesting question in a comment on the satirical Top 10 Reasons to Oppose Universal Healthcare. He’d known someone who was affluent enough not to need health insurance. Thus, he reasoned, perhaps I exaggerated the case when implying that people who don’t have insurance wish they did.
Fortunately, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides clarifying data. Here’s the CDC chart, which can be seen in context at the CDC’s website.
QuickStats: Reasons for No Health Insurance Coverage* Among Uninsured Persons Aged <65 Years — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2004†
* Based on response to a survey question regarding the reasons a household member stopped being covered by health insurance or did not have health insurance. Persons might be counted in more than one category.
† Estimates are age adjusted using the 2000 projected U.S. population as the standard population and using four age groups: 0–11 years, 12–17 years, 18–44 years, and 45–64 years. Estimates are based on household interviews of a sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population.
§ 95% confidence interval.
¶ Includes moved, self-employed, never had coverage, did not want or need coverage, and other unspecified reasons.
The answer, then? What percentage did not desire health insurance? We can’t tell exactly, but they are a subgroup of the “Other” category (see the paragraph just above, where I added emphasis). In other words, they comprise some fraction of 6% of un-insured Americans under age 65.
Related posts: Jane Bryant Quinn: Yes, We Can All Be Insured
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Clinton healthcare called “gigantic subsidy” for insurance industry
A Bible argument for government aid to the poor
Abortion laws may not reduce abortion rates
World healthcare: three amazing maps
Top 10 reasons for single-payer healthcare
The World Health Organization’s ranking of the world’s health systems
Physicians for a National Health Program
Tags: CDC, no+health+insurance, without+health+insurance, universal+health+care, single+payer+health+care, Monte Asbury
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The Least, First 
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Fein Blades
June 29, 2011 at 4:31 pm
of course health insurance is very much essential for your own sake,-`
Marine Paint :
October 28, 2010 at 6:10 am
Good info. and reading. I would definitely bookmark you to check for new updates.
Thanks,
Dean
Dean Calvert
February 11, 2008 at 2:51 am
Hi, Monte,
Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and that God blesses you enormously in 2008.
Regarding health insurance, it seems to me that only the very, VERY rich would think they don’t need health insurance. One good bout of cancer and you’re out tens of thousands of dollars.
We don’t have insurance for two reasons: First, we can’t afford it. (At one point we choose to afford catastrophic, but decided it was simply a black hole.) And second, and most important, we refuse to pump any money God has entrusted to us into an immoral, unjust–and collapsing– system. Why further connect ourselves to the spirit of this age, which announces not that Christ is born and we have been given eternal life, but that we must fear death and poverty most of all, take great care to be financially “responsible,” hedge our bets, and protect ourselves–because God will not.
Peace to you and yours.
Monte Says: Hello AA, old friend! So good to “hear your voice!” I’d add one category to your people who “think they don’t need health insurance.” Young, healthy, and innocent post-college adults seem to be the primary “anti” voices who appear here. I suspect it is simply hard for them, given the bargain that their health insurance is now, to grasp how very easy it is to end up spending one’s life paying off health debts as opposed to, say, buying one’s home. I understand health care is now the leading cause of bankruptcy; it is unthinkable to many in youth.
Peace to you as well!
Amy/Adela
January 1, 2008 at 6:08 pm