The open enrollment season for health insurance is gearing up at a time when more people in the United States have health insurance than ever before. Yet millions of Americans who enroll this fall still won’t be able to easily afford the health care they need or will be hit with medical bills they can’t pay.
Why? Because whether you have health insurance through an employer, the individual market, or even through Medicare, high health care costs and coverage exclusions are making insurance less protective each year.
To be sure, being insured is still much better than being uninsured, something that’s been known for decades. The Affordable Care Act built on nearly 60 years of progress in expanding insurance coverage. Starting with the inception of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, successive, incremental reforms have brought the U.S. to the point where now only 8.3% of Americans are uninsured. Although that is higher than any other industrialized country, it proves that political will and steady reforms —the American way — can bring us to a better, healthier place.
