Bob he is correct. The most expensive primary health care is found in the emergency room. 95% of those that present in an ER could be managed by a primary care physician if they had one! The failure to provide primary care to all is one of the most expensive upside down issues is the undoctored population...not only do they cost the most to treat because they present in the most expensive environment (the ER) they also tend to present themselves and their family members in a much more acute situation, because they don't have a primary care physician doing normal oversight and managing maladies in a sub acute environment and at a much lower acuity level...the un-doctored are a major load on the health care delivery system...
Only a small percentage of the un-doctored population are illegal immigrants as some think. Estimates state that there are:
Who are the uninsured (the un-doctored)?
* Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2005, the latest government data available.
* The number of uninsured rose 2.2 million between 2005 and 2006 and has increased by almost 9 million people since 2000.1
* The large majority of the uninsured (80 percent) are native or naturalized citizens.
* The increase in the number of uninsured in 2006 was focused among working age adults. The percentage of working adults (18 to 64) who had no health coverage climbed from 19.7 percent in 2005 to 20.2 percent in 2006.1 Nearly 1.3 million full-time workers lost their health insurance in 2006.
* Nearly 90 million people - about one-third of the population below the age of 65 spent a portion of either 2006 or 2007 without health coverage.
* Over 8 in 10 uninsured people come from working families - almost 70 percent from families with one or more full-time workers and 11 percent from families with part-time workers.
* The percentage of people (workers and dependents) with employment-based health insurance has dropped from 70 percent in 1987 to 59 percent in 2006. This is the lowest level of employment-based insurance coverage in more than a decade.
* In 2005, nearly 15 percent of employees had no employer-sponsored health coverage available to them, either through their own job or through a family member.
* In 2006, 37.7 million workers were uninsured because not all businesses offer health benefits, not all workers qualify for coverage and many employees cannot afford their share of the health insurance premium even when coverage is at their fingertips.
* The number of uninsured children in 2006 was 8.7 million - or 11.7 percent of all children in the U.S.1 The number of children who are uninsured increased by nearly 610,000 in 2006, the second year that the number of uninsured children increased.
* Young adults (18-to-24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2005 - 29.3 percent of this group did not have health insurance.
* The percentage and the number of uninsured Hispanics increased to 34.1 percent and 15.3 million in 2006.
* Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more. A growing number of middle-income families cannot afford health insurance payments even when coverage is offered by their employers.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
These are the data that may kill this country in the next 20 years...according to many experts.
