Paul Mirengoff, one of the three authors of the Power Line blog, writes an interesting column answering the question "Who are the uninsured in America?" The President and his minions keep throwing around the number 46 million. Mirengoff shows this inflated number is far from realistic.
It turns out that the real number is about one third of that, or 15.5 million who are citizens or lawful residents, truly cannot afford to purchase health insurance, and cannot qualify for a government program like Medicaid.
Mirengoff reports in considerable detail on the various categories into which the balance of 30.5 million uninsured fall. Roughly 11 million are either covered by Medicaid or S-CHIP or are eligible to be covered but have never applied. Another 9.5 million are non-citizens. A third group of 10 million earns three times the poverty line income but chooses not to purchase insurance. Mirengoff explains why this may be a rational choice for young, healthy people.
That number of the true uninsured, 15.5 million, is still a lot of uninsured Americans, but it is only about 5% of our population, or one individual in twenty. We shouldn't need to completely revamp our health care system to insure the 1/20th of our population who need coverage.
