Twenty-nine percent of Hoosiers younger than 65 lacked health insurance at some point during 2007-08, according to a report released Thursday.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports the number of people who don’t have health insurance for the full previous calendar year. But the data collected by Families USA, an advocacy group that promotes universal health insurance, also include those who were uninsured for a portion of the 2-year period studied.
Based on this calculation, about 1.6 million Hoosiers were uninsured, including 1.1 million who were uninsured for six months or more.
Nationally, one in three people younger than 65 was uninsured at some point during 2007-08, or about 86.7 million Americans. That compares with 45.7 million people who were deemed uninsured for the entire 2007 calendar year, according to Census Bureau data.
“At this point, almost everyone in the country has had a family member, neighbor, or friend who was uninsured,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement “and that’s why meaningful health care reform can no longer be kept on the back burner.”
Ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected. In Indiana, 53 percent of Hispanics and 42.3 percent of blacks were uninsured, compared with 26.4 percent of whites, according to the report by Families USA.
Lower-income Hoosiers were more likely to be uninsured, and most uninsured Hoosiers in the report – 77.4 percent – came from working families.
Locally, the percentage of uninsured seeking care at Fort Wayne-based Parkview Health rose from 10 percent in 2005 to 11.6 percent last year. Numerous national surveys and anecdotal evidence show that many others are putting off medical care and forgoing medications because of economic pressures and lack of health coverage.
Anecdotally, the number of local residents who don’t have adequate health insurance appears to be increasing, said Meg Distler, executive director for St. Joseph Community Health Foundation.
