The Demographics of the Uninsured

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You sometimes hear talk suggesting that the bulk of the uninsured are just young and overconfident people who don't really want to pay for health insurance. Today's new report on health care from the Council of Economic Advisers shows that while there are certainly a lot of uninsured young people, this is hardly the whole story:

It's also worth emphasizing, as this chart illustrates, that for all the scare stories you hear about "socialized medicine" or the government "coming between you and your doctor" it's not a coincidence that senior citizens are almost never uninsured. There's a government program which does that. And of course senior citizens have the most health care needs. If a universal system is good enough for grandma, it's not clear why we'd view it as terrifying for the rest of us.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives...e-uninsured.php

Edited August 25, 2009 by Col. 'Bat' Guano

[GabiandVi 34]

This is very interesting. But it doesn't give the percentage of the unisured, only the percentage of a certain age group that is uninsured. I'm actually surprised that it's not a higher percentage of people in their early 20s. I went uninsured when I was in my 20s. Idiot! Fortunately, I never needed medical care.