Universal Health: Almost 1 in 5 Americans Going Without Health Care

The single greatest tragedy of our kleptocracy is the needless pain, suffering and deaths inflicted on American citizens by the rapacious health insurance industry. Of the people who presume to lead us as president, only Dennis Kucinich has shown a willingness to take on the insurance companies. A new report by the CDC offers up-to-date testimony to the enormity of the problem.

Money, availability of care and lack of transportation combine to limit access, CDC report finds

by Steven Reinberg (US News/HealthDay News, 2007-12-03)

Almost 20 percent of Americans, or more than 40 million adults, can't afford or access needed health care, according to a new U.S. government report released Monday.

Access to health care is the focus of this year's Health, United States, 2007 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It shows that one-fifth of Americans couldn't afford one or more of these services: medical care, prescription medicines, mental health care, dental care, or eyeglasses.

"People tend to equate access to care with insurance," said report author Amy Bernstein, chief of the analytic studies branch at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. "But access to care is more than insurance."

"People assume that if you have health insurance of any kind that you're okay, but that's not the case," she added.

Among the other barriers are locales without enough doctors, lack of transportation to doctors and clinics, and shortages of such organs as kidneys for transplants.

That means that even when people "have health insurance there are still disparities," Bernstein said.

In 2005, almost one in 10 people aged 18 to 64 years old reported not being able to afford prescription drugs and almost 10 percent said they postponed getting the medical care they needed.

The rest of the story: U.S.News
The full Health, United States: 2007 is available at <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/>.