A national group has issued a report on the uninsured on the heels of a debate in Davenport by five presidential candidates on health care reform and retirement security issues. The executive director of Families U.S.A, Ron Pollack, says they used a variety of Census Bureau data to get a picture of the uninsured in America.
Pollack says 89.6 million Americans were uninsured at some point during the last year. All of the people were under the age of 65. Pollack says the numbers show why health care continues to be a top priority for many. He says the number of uninsured constitutes one out of every three non-elderly Americans who have been uninsured at some point over the last two years.
Pollack says some of the country’s largest states — like Texas with nearly 46-percent and California at 41-percent — had the largest number of uninsured. Iowa ranked 48th for the number of uninsured at 26-point-two percent. He says if you look back to the periods from 1999 to 2000, 79-point-five million people were uninsured.
Pollock says over the span of seven years the number of people uninsured over a two-year period has expanded by 17-million. Iowa’s uninsured increased from 553-thousand in 1999 to 2000, to 664-thousand in the last two years. For more on the report, surf to Families USA. website .