How many people are covered by PRIVATE health insurance in our country?

[Still a Democrat]

Factor out medicaid, medicare, the VA, public employees at all levels, and other government supplied health care - how many does the private sector really cover? How many of our 300 million would be uninsured if there were no coverage sponsored by the governement?

[jpljr77]

1. Why factor out public employees?

I mean, I get your question. But public employees are covered almost exclusively by private insurance companies.

Yes, some kind of government pays the tab, but the tab is being paid to a private corporation.

But in an attempt to answer your question, according to ADP's http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/pdf/FINAL_Report_December_10.pdf">latest employment report, there are 107,500,000 non-farm private sector employees in the U.S. So that figure is a start.

[Common Sense Party]

2. 60% of those with health insurance get it thru an employer

Among the 84.2% with health insurance in 2006, coverage was provided through an employer 59.7%, purchased individually 9.1%, and 27.0% was government funded (Medicare, Medicaid, Military). (There is some overlap in coverage figures.) Source: US Census Bureau

http://www.healthpaconline.net/health-care-statistics-in-the-united-states.htm

According to the cited website

[Maine_Nurse]

5. Differs greatly by state

About 46% of ours is Medicare/Medicaid. Another 10-15% with no coverage at all. Military is probably a pretty healthy size here. I'd guess a bit less than 40% have private insurance. If you exclude Fed/State employees that obviously drops some more.

[Still a Democrat]

6. And that doesn't even include government employees

Good info, thanks.

[dkofos]

3. Just enough to make >100 people seriously rich.

[leftstreet]

7. +1

[kestrel91316]

4. Not me. No medical ins of any kind.

[mdmc]

8. I'm "covered" by private health insurance, but can't access medical treatment

due to high costs

[Vinca]

9. My husband and I were priced out of insurance in 2004.

We figured that had we gone in to debt to pay for it, we would have been in the hole more than $100,000 and because of the high deductible they wouldn't have paid a dime out for our care. It really pisses me off the way individuals and the self-employed are screwed over in this country.

[mdmc]

10. ..

[w8liftinglady]

11. in Texas, 49% have private insurance

we are lowest in the nation

[Curmudgeoness]

12. I did this calculation once using stats from Kaiser Family

Foundation website. I determined that the total people receiving Medicaid, Medicare, VA, government employees, prisoners, CHIPS, and god knows what else I determined was government paid health care. It came out to about 65% of the population of the US using some form of government health care. This isn't the real picture though, since one individual may be in more than one category (such as Medicare covered veterans who use VA benefits or Medicare recipients who are in nursing homes and have to be covered by Medicaid also).