Americas Uninsured Crisis PDF Download

The private health insurance industry is unable to provide nearly 40 million Americans with basic health care. Millions more live with inadequate coverage. Addressing this dilemma, Lawrence D. Weiss offers a timely and important analysis of the health insurance crisis in America. Relying on data from a wide range of publications about this secretive industry, he investigates the causes of the industry's problems and analyzes the social effects of the growing crisis. In recent decades, health insurance costs have escalated dramatically, at times jumping 20 to 40 percent annually. During the same period, the cost of health care has risen 8 to 12 percent per year. Although insurance industry officials claim that high premiums are a result of rising medical costs, Weiss shows that the rising cost of health care insurance is more a result of other factors, such as excessive overhead costs and industry-wide inefficiency. The private insurance industry in America enjoys special federal exemptions from antimonopoly regulations. Nevertheless, irresponsible investment strategies shake the industry to its core; Fraud, deception, and corruption (often targeting the elderly) surface with dismaying regularity, and insolvencies and mergers plague enterprises ranging from small local carriers to huge national corporations. The effects? Skyrocketing premiums force employers to shift the costs of coverage to their workers, to terminate or reduce benefits, or to self-insure, making low-income workers and employees of small businesses especially vulnerable. Insurers have become reluctant to provide coverage for certain segments of society, and they deny millions health care, at best relegating them tocostly public-sector programs. The difficulties are felt most intensely within certain social groups - minorities, young adults, children, single female heads of households, those with imperfect health histories, and those perceived as homosexuals. Moreover, as the crisis deepens, America's middle class increasingly finds itself in the ranks of the uninsured. The public, health policy analysts, and public health students will find this book fascinating reading and an indispensable resource in the growing debate over the health insurance crisis.