Sometimes junkfoodscience gets kinda junky itself

[firecat]

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/07/uninsured-making-diagnosis.html

Today's junkfoodscience post discusses how many people in the US are uninsured and argues that the number is lower than commonly reported. Furthermore, it argues that many of the people who are uninsured can afford to buy insurance but do not.

According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2005” issued on August 2006: Of the 46.6 million Americans they cited as uninsured in 2005, 17.04 million without health insurance live in households making more than $50,000 a year. That’s 37% of the uninsured in the U.S. Nearly 9 million of those make more than $75,000.

In fact, according to the Census Bureau, the biggest increases in uninsured by household incomes over the past decade has been among those making the most money.

The sentence below immediately follows the previous one, subtly giving the impression that the Census Bureau has made this determination of why the people involved are not insured. I'm not an expert on the Census Bureau but it seems pretty likely to me that this is Swarcz's own theory:

They are people who generally have access to and can afford insurance, but prefer to self-insure for whatever reason, perhaps to keep their healthcare decisions out of the hands of their employer or government.

I'm sure some of them are, but all? I don't think so. She uses the same trick later on (I've italicized the part that I believe is her theory and not a Census Bureau pronouncement):

According to the Census Bureau, more than 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34, for whom health insurance isn’t a priority and they’ve chosen, wisely or not, to spend their disposable income on other things.

I know some people who don't have health insurance even though they can afford and get it. And insofar as Swarcz is warning against too-invasive and too-restrictive government programs, I agree—I think there should be a guaranteed right to access health care, but I don't think people should be forced into accessing it in particular ways.

But I'm very disappointed that a blog which covers the systemic discrimination against fat people so carefully most of the time doesn't even mention the fact that many fat people in the United States are denied insurance even if they can afford it. Swarcz does mention existing government programs providing insurance to people who can't afford it. There are also some government programs for high-risk groups—I looked into the California one a few times when my insurance was about to go away and I was unable to find any insurance companies willing to sell me health insurance. The last I checked, the California program had a months-long waiting list and the lifetime payout maximum was too low to cover any really serious medical condition.

ETA: After I wrote this post, Swarcz added some text to her post addressing the issue of people who are denied coverage at any price.

Comments

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think private health insurance is a myth. Everybody I know who has tried to get it has been rejected.

[jenk]

We got it, in Washington state no less. The trick is

1. Get coverage through an employer.
2. When leaving the employer, continue coverage through COBRA.
3. Apply before your COBRA coverage runs out.

We did it all through the mail - no weights were asked, and certainly no physicals.

[firecat]

I have an individual plan that I got sorta-kinda this way - I didn't have coverage through an employer but through a professional association. People who'd been in the professional organization less than some number of months when they were forced to cancel their insurance coverage were SOL, though.

This doesn't really count as private underwritten health insurance though. The companies only offer it because they are required to by law. The time before this one, when I lost coverage (my COBRA period ran out), the only individual option available cost $10,000 a month, no that's not a typo. (It wasn't underwritten either, it was offered by law, but at that point the law had not specified that the plan had to be offered at a reasonable price.) I got lucky with the professional organization at that time. The professional organization was also able to offer health insurance only by law, a CA law that required insurers to offer plans to non-profit organizations who met a certain set of criteria.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too, in Virginia. It really helped because I'm no longer insurable because I'm seriously chronically ill. I got Medicare, too, so I have the HMO's Medicare plan.

(Crap, Bush just commuted Libby's jail sentence.)

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!

I worry if I get laid off from my job, that I'll (actually we'll) be only good for the 18 months of COBRA, and then kablooey unless one or the other of us finds a job with health benefits.

[jenk]

I found my state insurance commissioner's website very helpful, complete with links to the companies that were legally setup to offer individual coverage in this state.

The scary part at first was how they kept pointing to their "risk test", which determines who goes into the state's "high-risk" pool, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, oh if you already have coverage you don't have to bother with the test.

[firecat]

I know people who got it, but not many.