NCPA Says Congress Should Offer Solutions, Not Rhetoric on Uninsured

9/30/2002

From: Sean Tuffnell or Richard Walker, 800-859-1154 of the National Center for Policy Analysis e-mail: rwalker@ncpa.org

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 -- The U.S. Census Bureau today announced that the number of Americans who went without health insurance sometime during 2001 increased by 1.4 million Americans. However, scholars with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) say that Congress should resist rhetoric about this inflated estimate, and instead focus on solutions to the real problem.

"To adequately solve the problem of the uninsured, we need more than an inflated estimate, said John C. Goodman, president of the NCPA. "We need a better understanding of who is uninsured and why."

The main problem with the Current Population Survey (CPS), the report used by the Census bureau to estimate the number of uninsured is that people are asked to recall whether they had coverage in the previous year, and many either forget or misinterpret the question. In addition, many who report to the CPS that they are uninsured are actually eligible for Medicaid and typically enroll when and if they get sick.

Additionally, the Census numbers foster two main false assumptions about the uninsured. Like unemployment, many of the uninsured are only without insurance for a short period. Typically, 60 percent of the uninsured are only uninsured for 9 months or less, and 45 percent attain insurance in 4 months or less. This year's report claims 14.6 percent Americans had no insurance at all during 2001.

Another common misconception is that most uninsured simply cannot afford the cost of health insurance coverage. Yet according to NCPA research, the growth among uninsured in recent years has come from moderate to high-income families, who are mainly uninsured by choice. (http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba379/)

NCPA research also shows that expansion of government programs such as Medicaid and S-CHIPs, one of the most commonly proposed solutions, doesn't solve the problem of the uninsured because those programs often substitute public funds in place of private insurance, leaving little changed. For example, as many as 75 percent of the "new" coverage resulting from Medicaid expansions in the early 1990s was offset by a reduction in employer coverage. (http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba415/)

"Carefully crafted tax credit proposals, like those offered by President Bush, have the ability to insure 6 million previously uninsured Americans," Goodman added, "with very little offset in terms of reduced private coverage."

------ The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D.C., that advocates personal solutions to public policy problems. The NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share its mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.