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Elementary Math

It’s amazing how the intelligent, informed, enlightened “fact based community” can flunk simple math by saying that 20 million is equal to 47 million:

In his propagandumentary “SiCKO” that favored the socialist health care systems of Canada, Britain, France and Cuba, Michael Moore made the fantastic claim that almost 50 million Americans are uninsured.

“SiCKO: There are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance,” quoted Moore’s Web site.

However, the Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005,” puts the initial number of uninsured people living in the country at 46.577 million.

A closer look at that report reveals the Census data include 9.487 million people who are “not a citizen.” Subtracting the 10 million non-Americans, the number of uninsured Americans falls to roughly 37 million.

Moore should have paid attention to that fact, since he agrees that being “an American” matters to get health insurance.

“That’s the only preexisting condition that should exist. I am an American. That’s it,” said Moore in footage aired by ABC’s “Nightline” on June 13.

That isn’t the only problem with the numbers currently being used.

If you’ve been to the site since I started posting, you know what’s coming next:

In his film and television appearances, Moore left out quite a bit of information about the uninsured.

On his Web site, Moore claimed the Census Bureau had “underreported” the number of people without health insurance.

But Cheryl Hill Lee, a co-author of the Census Bureau study Moore was citing, told the Business & Media Institute that the data showed the exact opposite of what Moore said.

The Census “underreported” the number of people covered by health insurance – meaning that more people have insurance than the report suggests. The Census also underreported the number of people covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

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“The number of Americans with no health insurance is continuing to grow as more and more employers say they can’t afford to offer group insurance … People who try to buy insurance on their own often find the price beyond their reach,” said Couric as she introduced a two-part “investigation of the health insurance industry.”

But according to the same Census report, there are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326.

One important caveat here. Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you can get insurance. If you have a chronic condition, for example, you’re SOL. My own insurance agent couldn’t insure himself because of an eye condition. And one could argue that, in these cases, government help is the only option to bankruptcy.

However, bottom line:

So what is the true extent of the uninsured “crisis?” The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report.

Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more.  It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That number actually sounds a bit low to me, based on my own experience. But, of course, we’re focusing on insurance, not care. These people are not being tossed out of emergency rooms. They just don’t have an insurance company footing the bills.

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