Oct 09
KSL.com reports that 388,000 Utahans are without health insurance:
Health officials say many people can’t afford health insurance.
Questions and facts I wish the reporter had followed:
- How many people live in Utah? (Answer: About 2.5 million)
- What does insurance cost on average (for individuals about $1,500 annually, for families about $3,500)
- How many people choose not to have insurance because they are healthy and young? Anecdotally, I know quite a few in that situation.
- It is estimated that 15% of the 47 million “uninsured” Americans are illegal immigrants. How many of Utah’s estimate are here illegally?
- How long is the average period of no insurance? Nationally, 1/3rd of the uninsured are uninsured for less than 6 months.
My basic beef, and this seems especially true with Utah reporters, is WHY DON’T THEY ASK QUESTIONS!
If I’m supposed to make decisions about government and policy, I need more information than a raw out of context number. Wouldn’t your actions be different if you thought that of the 388,000, that 60,000 were illegals, and 130,000 would have insurance again pretty soon.
It took me about 10 minutes to pull together these numbers. Come on reporters, report don’t cut/paste from press releases!