Reducing The Number Of The 50 Million Uninsured

House Republicans have introduced a health care bill to counter the one currently being promoted by Obama and the Democrats. The plan is estimated to cost about $700 billion-- not a bad price when compared to ObamaCare's $1 trillion-plus. The Republican plan involves offering tax incentives for people to purchase health insurance, creating grants to set up "high-risk pools" for people whose medical problems could result in their being denied coverage from traditional insurers, and allowing consumers to purchase insurance over the internet and across state lines, amongst other things. The Congressional Budget Office has yet to asses the plan, but Republicans believe that it will be fully paid for. I recommend reading the linked article for more information.

Of course, the article (written by the Associated Press, and posted on MSNBC.com) closes with the obligatory reminder of the "nearly 50 million" uninsured, and the writer wonders how far the Republican plan would go in reducing that number, mentioning that most experts believe the best way to go about it is to require people to purchase insurance (thereby ensuring that those who opt out of coverage due to cost will be forced to add their names to the government dole-- but surely that's just a coincidence... right?).

While neither the article nor the Republican plan offers a means of reducing the number ("nearly 50 million") of uninsured people in America, I have come up with a way to do so myself. (Ok, not ALL by myself-- this required a bit of research.)

First, we need to determine just who these "nearly 50 million" people are. The first thing we find is that these "nearly 50 million" people make up 15.9% of the population. While certainly significant, that's not that big of a number. Think of it in terms of a dollar: sure you've got almost 16 uninsured pennies, but let's try not to screw over the other 84.1 pennies who are insured, and likely perfectly happy the way they are. (I am terribly terrible at math; thinking about percentages in terms of a dollar [something concrete] rather than just part of a hundred [something a little bit abstract] helps me to make sense of the numbers. Please, humor me.)

And here's the thing about the US dollar-- it's made up of US pennies. However we've somehow managed to get some foreign coins mixed into our 16 uninsured pennies. Turns out that 20% (assuming my math is correct, please feel free to double-check my numbers, and let me know if I miscalculated!) of our uninsured pennies (3 of them) are actually not pennies at all! (Nearly 10 million illegal immigrants are included in the "nearly 50 million" uninsured Americans calculation-- people who do not pay taxes, but would receive benefits under the Democrat plan.) But hey, just by identifying them, we've found out that we actually only have 13 uninsured pennies! (At this point my analogy becomes imperfect because we also now only have 97 cents instead of a dollar... but let's look past that reality for the time being.)

Human will (or, to better fit my analogy, the will of anthropogenic coins) being what it is, some of your uninsured pennies-- 34%, or between 5 and 6 pennies (again, please correct my math if it is wrong!)-- can afford to insure themselves but simply choose not to take on the expense. Hey, it's a free country! If you want to take that gamble, take it-- it's YOUR money. For generally healthy people, it's usually a good gamble. So, since nearly 6 of your pennies do not actually want insurance, we can subtract them from our number of uninsured pennies, much as people who are out of work because they choose to be (and are not actively seeking employment) are not included in unemployment statistics. So now we have only 7 uninsured pennies, and among those are a few more foreign coins who chose not to purchase insurance despite the fact that they can afford it.

There you have it. I have spent absolutely $0, and managed to take the number of Americans in need of health insurance down from almost 16% to less than 7%. I should be in Congress!