Covering the Uninsured in America
April 27th through May 3rd is Cover the Uninsured Week.
Cover the Uninsured Week is a national effort that seeks
to bring attention to the fact that too many Americans are
living without health insurance. Statistics
show that forty-seven million Americans, including over 9
million children, lack health care coverage.
State programs have been created in an attempt to reduce the
amount of uninsured. One such program is
S-CHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that was
created in 1997 to cover children whose families earn too much
money to quality for Medicaid but too little to purchase private
health insurance. Another program is
BadgerCare which serves the state of Wisconsin by providing
health care to children under the age of 19 and their families
regardless of income.
In addition to these, Medicare and Medicaid are national assistance programs. Medicare is designed to assist people age 65 and older and Medicaid assists the low-income and disabled. Still, as a country, the United States falls short of other countries. In 2003, the United States spent 15% of its GDP on health care, the highest percentage of industrialized countries. The average percentage of GDP spent on health care in other industrialized countries was 8.6%. Furthermore, only 44% of health spending is funded by government revenues; well below the average of 72% in fellow industrialized countries.
More needs to be done to bring about a solution to this issue. The best way to do this is to increase awareness about the issue by becoming involved with Cover the Uninsured Week. There are many ways to get involved and may include organizing a health coverage forum, contacting a state or national representative, distributing information, and spreading the word in general. Although Cover the Uninsured week last only one week, health care coverage for Americans is an issue that impacts our country 365 days a year.