More Americans losing health insurance coverage, CDC says

More Americans losing health insurance coverage, CDC says

About 59 million Americans did not have health insurance this year, four million more compared to 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a news conference today.

“Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade,” CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said.

The latest data impacts the health care reform bill approved by Congress in March that would give coverage to an additional 32 million Americans.

But Republicans, who wrested control of Congress during the past mid-term election said that they would limit the funding for the program if not scrap it altogether. Analysts say that health care reform would be painfully slow to realize in the next two years because of opposition to be mounted by the Republican-led House of Representatives.

Congress already extended rules governing insurance coverage of children prior to the health care reform bill, but this has not helped much in the overall coverage numbers.

“As private insurance coverage fell, the safety net protected children, but did not adequately protect adults,” Frieden said.

Information collected by the CDC said that nine percent of adults lost coverage this year and just 5 percent of them were picked up by public insurance. At least 22 percent of Americans aged 18 to 64 remain without health insurance coverage, the CDC said.

The federal agency said it utilized data from the National Health Interview Survey for 2006 until the first quarter of 2010. Frieden described the survey as “an in-person household survey interviewing nearly 90,000 individuals from around 35,000 households.”

Posted by George Daniels on Thursday November 11 2010, 5:31 AM EDT. Ref: Reuters. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0