Bill Moyers on health insurance: Condition CRITICAL

The film CRITICAL CONDITION puts a human face on how three families face illness without health coverage. There are 47 million Americans without health insurance. But who are they? The great battle being waged over whether health insurance coverage should be mandatory for Americans has led to fallacies about who is uninsured and underinsured.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation offers these five facts about the uninsured.

• Most of the uninsured are in working families and do not have access to employer-sponsored insurance.
• More than eight in ten of the uninsured are in low- or moderate-income families.
• Most low- and moderate-income uninsured adults are not eligible for Medicaid.
• The uninsured suffer from negative health consequences due to their lack of access to necessary medical care.
• Medical bills are a burden for the uninsured and frequently leave them with debt.

Additional facts from POV'S CRITICAL CONDITION site:

• 80% of the uninsured are adults. Young adults (ages 19-24) are at greatest risk of being uninsured and make up more than one of every three uninsured adults.
• The majority of uninsured adults (75%) have gone without coverage for a period of at least one year.
• The average total annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage in 2007 was $12,106 — seldom affordable to low-wage workers without sizable contributions from their employers.

(More here.)