Despite the fact that more people are taking
money out of that safety net than are putting in
and a threat that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2037 – the American public is unwilling to do anything drastic about the safety net.
Still, that leaves quite a large number of people
who either have to buy insurance on their own
or remain uninsured. One estimate shows that
about 44 million people in the United States
have no health insurance and 38 million have
inadequate insurance. While those numbers are
huge for a developed nation, for a lot of people
there is no “shared responsibility” for health per
se. Most people don’t “own” the care of their
health; it was provided and mostly paid for by
someone else.
Despite the fact
that more people are
taking money out of
that safety net than
are putting in and
a threat that the
Medicare fund will
be depleted by 2037,
the American public
is unwilling to do
anything drastic
about the safety net.
CHANGING WORKFORCE, CHANGING
INSURANCE COVERAGE
All of that is changing. Some of it started to
change when the availability of employer-sponsored healthcare coverage started to decline
a decade ago. According to a 2010 report, the
number of people with employer-sponsored
health insurance was down 10.6 percent from
what it was in 2000. By 2013, the decline was
even greater