Is the private health insurance industry failing?
Wonk Room » New Census Numbers: Public Health Programs Are A Lifeline For Americans Who Can’t Afford Coverage . Igor Volsky says private health insurers are increasingly failing to cover Americans, and government programs are picking up the slack; and adduces a chart that shows private coverage and employer-based private coverage shrank 0.8% from 2007 to 2008 while Medicare, SCHIP and Medicaid coverage grew. Thing is, this data doesn’t necessarily show what Volsky says it shows. For instance, the population is growing older, so you’d figure more people are shifting out of the workforce and into Medicare eligibility. You’d need to include some data on how much of this change is accounted for demographic shifts before you can draw quite the conclusions he does. Still, it seems pretty unlikely that the population could age so fast that it would account for most of that shift in just one year. It probably is mostly the rising cost of private health insurance. Add: I posted this in comments
