According to a September 2009 Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008,” there were 46.3 million uninsured Americans in 2008, up from 45.6 million in 2007.
The chart above shows the household income levels of those 46.3 million uninsured Americans (from Table 7 in the report). There are 9.7 million uninsured Americans living in households making $75,000 per year or more, and this represents more than one out of every five uninsured (21 percent of the total). There are 8 million Americans without health insurance in households making between $50,000 and $75,000, representing 17.3 percent of the uninsured. With those two groups combined, 38.3 percent of Americans without health insurance (17.7 million people) lived in households with $50,000 or more of household income in 2008.
With $50,000 or more in household income, wouldn’t many or most of those 17.7 million uninsured be without insurance voluntarily? That is, couldn’t most of those households afford health insurance?
Alternatively, with those income levels (especially the 9.7 million with household income above $75,000), couldn’t many of those households choose to forgo health insurance in favor of being “self-insured,” at least for routine health procedures? Given the widespread availability of more than a thousand convenient and affordable retail health clinics around the country at Wal-Mart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens, these households could easily be on the “pay-as-you-go” model of self-insurance for healthcare, at least for routine medical services.
And for protection again major medical expenses, various individual Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are currently available in the District of Columbia as one example (rates vary around the country), starting at only $60 per month for a 25-year-old, $74 per month for a 35-year-old, $102 per month for a 45-year-old, and $158 monthly for a 55-year-old. These quotes are for the most affordable, high-deductible plans, with dozens of other plans available with lower deductibles and more coverage at higher monthly premiums. But it’s an important point that affordable, basic health insurance is currently available in the United States at about the same cost as a monthly cell phone or cable TV plan.