Pay as you go healthcare will mean nothing if it’s not affordable for Connecticut’s poorest residents.
That’s the crux of an article by Susan Campbell at the CT Health Investigation Team. Campbell talked with a non-profit agency director who said the “so-called state health exchange—or online insurance marketplace – should make insurance more accessible starting late next year. But accessible means nothing if the plans aren’t affordable.”
According to the article, fewer and fewer American workers are covered by traditional, employment-based plans. A February Gallup poll said 44.6 percent were covered by their employers in 2011, compared to 45.8 the year before. For employees who have such plans, out-of-pocket costs, co-pays, and deductibles, are rising, according to a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. That’s especially true among low-wage earners, the people who can least afford the increase.
In Connecticut, the article also said, “… 308,945 Connecticut [residents] were uninsured in 2011. Estimates for city dwellers – where poverty is more concentrated—ran higher. In Bridgeport, the poverty rate tops out at 25.7 percent; 23.3 percent of residents there didn’t have insurance at the time of the [U.S. Census] survey.
