Health Affairs, a health policy journal devoted to publishing original, peer-reviewed research and commentary, made available a new study on August 19 that examines the current spending on care for the uninsured, and projects additional medical spending if the population had health insurance coverage. Click here to read the full report.

The Kaiser Family Foundation states that nearly 77 million people will go without health insurance coverage in 2008 for all or part of the year. The Health Affairs study states that people uninsured for any part of 2008 spend collectively, about $30 billion out of pocket on health care services and receive approximately $56 billion uncompensated care while uninsured. The report found that government programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and state and local programs, pay $42.9 billion or 75% of the amount uninsured individuals are unable to pay for services received.

The study also projects the additional cost to the nation’s health care system if all the uninsured were covered by insurance. If everyone were covered, overall costs would increase by $123 billion dollars, or an additional five percent of national health spending. This overall cost is determined by the fact that insured people tend to use more health care services than the uninsured.

A Wall Street Journal article on the study discussed the potential impact of uncompensated care on premiums to patients with private insurance. Jack Hadley, one of the researchers of the study, noted that the impact on premiums would be “very small,” citing the fact that public hospitals and clinics that most often care for the uninsured often don’t have many privately insured patients to absorb the costs. Mr. Hadley added that “it’s more through taxes than private insurance bills.”

NSBA has worked for years developing a broad and comprehensive set of principles for health care reform that offer logical and needed changes to the U.S. health care system. These principles ensure that every American has access to high quality, affordable health insurance. For more information about NSBA’s principles for health reform, click here.