We keep hearing this number over and over: 45 Million Americans uninsured. Again and again we hear this as part of the scare tactic of those that would have the government take over 1/6 of the United States' economy.
So, what are the facts about these unfortunate 45 million uninsured?
First of all, let's do some quick math. That means that over 250 million Americans have health insurance. That's 85% of the population. Who are the remaining 15%?
Illegal aliens: 10 million of these 45 million are not in the country legally. Clearly the taxpayer has no responsibility to pay for their healthcare.
Young people: 18 million of the uninsured are between 18 and 35. These are typically healthy people, living without health insurance by CHOICE.
That is well over half of the 45 million, leaving only 17 million uninsured. I heard today that over 1 million of these are eligible for Medicare, but have not registered, for whatever reason. That means that about 95% of Americans citizens that want healthcare insurance already have it, and the 5% who don't, are not the same people in any given 12 month period. That means that many of these are people who are uninsured for a short period of time, and then have insurance again, replaced by someone else who temporarily falls off the insurance rolls. This is probably employment related.
This does not mean that we don't need to improve the system, and I have like some of the concepts I've heard (which I'll detail at a later time), but we do not have a crisis of the sort described by liberals in power, outside of funding the disaster of programs we already have under government control, and liberals' ambitions to derive more power by nationalizing healthcare.
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