Why are so many Americans uninsured?

Answer 1

Clinton screwed all that up, he tried to force it on companies so they just dropped it or went up on the amount it cost.
Before Clinton became president I used to pay $28.00 every two weeks for medical and dental for my family, now it's $280.00 every two weeks.

Answer 2

The US system is predicated on the idiotic idea that the _employer_ is responsible for much of the cost. Many lower paying jobs have no coverage at all.

In such a situation, if you had a potential employee who has a long term ailment (even something like diabetes) you wouldn't employ them. Consequently, a diabetic would not get a decent paying job and would instead have to take a lower quality and lower paying job and be less able to obtain regular (and cheaper) treatment for diabetes; what was minor will eventually become a chronic problem.

Conversely, in Canada and in some other countries, the individual pays into a medicare plan and the employers are not involved. The employer can pay slightly higher wages to the employee because there is no medical cost, AND there is no detrimental effect by hiring said diabetic; if a problem occurs, it will be covered by medicare.

Canada has universal coverage; even those on welfare can attend a doctor on a regular basis and not depend on emergency rooms. Forget any arguments about "socialized medicine", any system that puts people in a catch-22 ("sick people can't get a job because they can't get treatment, and they can't get treatment because they can't get a job") is idiotic.


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Answer 3

Wow, In Clinton days, We had high paying jobs to choose from, who can disagree with that, we had a balanced budget, if you did not work, you didn't want to work,when Clinton was in, the republicans said it was only record high because they ran the house and senate, now the republicans run the Presidency, house and senate look at now with complete Republican control, record high inflation, record high foreclosures, record high debt, even Fox News said Bush had a 33% approval rating much of what had to do with the economy, and now they say its either better then it was with Clinton, which I think most states will not agree with that, or they say Clinton is screwing it up now, just kind of DUMB, I just don't understand why people will follow a political party so blindly,. I just heard the Republican Strategist try to find uneducated, unhappy and angry people and keep telling them Clinton is why they are so unhappy, and because they are unhappy and uneducated, they believe it. I just cant believe when I see such blanket hate and outright false beliefs. Hey I think both parties can screw things up, but lets give credit where do.

Do yourself a favor and look at your own records and find out what you were paying in 1995, 1999 and 2005, and while your at it, do the same thing with your electric bills, gas bills student loan bills and every other bill, then state your case

Answer 4

Just simple, it's all about cost. Too expensive!

In the more responsible days, employers had provided family insurance.

Now days under CAPITALISM every man, women and children are on their own and the GOVERNMENT which serves this great USA nation - DON'T give a BUSHITE

Answer 5

There are several reasons for this.

Insurance/Medicare/medicaide are the biggest things driving health care costs up. Most offices spend at least a third of their income processing claims. It's such a big problem that more and more Docs are opting out of insurance completely and refusing to take any kind of insurance.

To the consumer it's mean higher and higher costs. The higher costs are passed on in premiums.

Another factor driving up health care costs are illegals. They are overrunning the health care system in some states. They know they do not need to pay. They know they must be treated if they arrive in an ambulence. As such they will sometimes ride an ambulence in for a cold.

Malpractice costs are driving up health care costs. It's not the big law suites that are the problem. Those are rare and usually justified. Ambulence chasers, with illegals being one of the biggest clients, sue for a hangnail. Even though the law suit is completely bogus it's just plain cheaper to settle out of court than to fight it. So these nickle and dime law suits are really crushing people because of the rapidly increasing malpractice insurance costs.

Insurance companies are milking every penny they can. So they pay as few claims as they can. They enforce sometimes dangerous standards of care going as far as preventing the doc from even talking about what they would normally do. Instead the cheaper and often less effective means is tried first. Long term it costs everybody more. Insurance companies though use the excuse to raise premiums above and beyond what it's costing them.

The damaged economy has created an employers market. Rising premium costs have been passed on to employees. Payroll taxes, rising expenses and the employee is the enemy attitude have pushed many employers to cease offering insurance benifits at all or to have health care plans that are beyond the ability of most of their employees to afford.

Unemployment is a big problem. While the official numbers show healthy employment rates this is bogus. For every recorded unemployed there are dozen crhonically unemployed who are not counted. Millions have hidden in universites or gotten on disability to duck the really tight job market. H1 visas, Illegals and outsourcing have gutted the US job market.

Those lucky enough to have jobs often stepped back to lower paying service type work which rarely has benifits.

Many companies to cut costs use as many part time employees as possible. This means no benifits, thus lower costs to employee them.

Illegals work mostly under the table. Many people to earn enough to survive on work under the table to avoid excessive child support and taxes. When people work under the table they are without benifits.

The self employed are becoming a growing force in the US. Contract labor is becoming the norm. Many entities including many Government facilities employ almost all contractors. Contractors rarely have benifits and many work for themselves. Many people hop from short contract to another as either an alterntive to full time employment they cannot find or as a more flexible schedule that allows them to deal with issues like childcare.

Growing dissatisfaction with sometimes lethal policies by insurance companies has led some people to opt out all together. For a healthy person it's actually cheaper to self pay than to use insurance. It's people with chronic conditions and who have catastrophic health care incidents who need insurance. If you visit a doc 3 times a year it is far cheaper to just pay the doc cash.

Single mothers often work service oriented jobs. The child or children they are raising is expensive. With either unemployed, dead, deadbeat or financially strapped fathers unable or unwilling to pay often single mothers are not able to make enough to get health insurance.

I think I covered most of the major causes.

Answer 6

Because people can't afford it. My husband's company wanted 234.00 every two weeks to add just me on his insurance. And to top it off, it was really crummy insurance. I don't know why our great regulatory commissions don't ever regulate the prices of such things as these and gas and oil prices and utilities. Things are our of control.

Answer 7

Check doctors salaries, and malpractice insurance rates, that willl give you an idea of why.

Answer 8

They can't afford it.