Health-Care Crisis: ; Nearly One in Five State Residents Lacks Insurance

Summary

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THE NEW uninsured statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau provide a sobering reminder of the failures of the U.S. health-care system. Here in West Virginia the number of uninsured has risen to 322,000 - nearly one of every five residents lacks coverage. Even for those lucky enough to be insured, ever-skimpier private policies helped push an estimated 5,700 West Virginia families into medical bankruptcy in 2001. As physicians who face our state's health-care crisis day in and day out, we support a single-payer "Medicare for All" system for West Virginia and for the nation.

Nearly everyone, regardless of ideology, agrees that reform to establish universal coverage is necessary. But the most important question is "how." Here not all proposals are created equal. Because our current non-system is based on insurance companies whose natural market behavior is to compete to cover healthy people while shunning the sick, proposals which preserve our reliance on them are destined for failure:

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Health-Care Crisis: ; Nearly One in Five State Residents Lacks Insurance

* "Individual Mandates" (like the much-celebrated Massachusetts plan) simply force the poor and near-poor to buy overpriced polices that offer grossly inadequate coverage, guaranteeing an...

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