They Say You Say

Employers provide most Texans with health insurance.

Only 35% of small employers in Texas offer health insurance to their employees.

Source: Texas Department of Insurance Analysis of 2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Only 49% of Texans have employer-sponsored health insurance.

Sources: Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured estimates based on the Census Bureau''s March 2005 and 2006 Current Population Survey (CPS: Annual Social and Economic Supplements).

Tax credits can help the uninsured pay for health insurance.

For individuals purchasing private health insurance, a typical tax credit of $1,000 per adult (up to 150% of the FPL) will make little difference towards the typical family premium of $11,000.

Individuals still pay co-pays, deductibles, co-insurance.

It will decrease the number of uninsured by 3-5 million, at most.

There is always Medicaid for those that can’t afford private health insurance.

In Texas, a working parent who makes more than $4,634 per year, makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid.

Texas is one of the states with the strictest criteria for adults to qualify for Medicaid.

Source: Center for Public Policy Priorities, The Texas Health Care Primer, Nov. 2003       

If you really need health care, you can get it.

18,000 Americans, from 25 to 65 years of age, die unnecessarily every year just because they have no health insurance.

In the U.S., more people die of uninsurance than die of HIV/AIDS. (In 2005, 17,011 persons died of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. www.cdc.gov) .

Source:   Institute of Medicine, 2004

2,500 uninsured Texans die prematurely each year.

Source: http://www.coderedtexas.org/files/code_red_
synopsis.pdf

If people just make healthy choices, our health care costs would go down.

80% of our health care dollars are spent by the sickest 20% of the population.

Making the already healthy 80% healthier, will not cut costs.

Source: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Data from Thorpe and Reinhart

The uninsured don’t work.

83% of the uninsured in Texas work either full time or part time.

Source: Census Bureau’s March 2005 and 2006 Current Population Survey

Texas has so many uninsured because of all the undocumented immigrants.

76%-82% of the uninsured in Texas are U.S. citizens.

Competition keeps health care costs down.

Since 1988:
Health insurance premiums have risen 125%.
Inflation has risen 38%.
Wages have risen 39%.

Source: http://www.kff.org/insurance/7031/print-sec3.cfm

We have the best health care system in the world!

The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality of the industrialized nations.

Source OECD data

Universal health care is socialized medicine!

Universal health care is a fine ideal, but I’ll never see it in my lifetime.

When people were asked what they'd prefer — 62% answered: "universal health insurance program, in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers.“
32% answered: "the current system, in which most people get their health insurance from private employers, but some people have no insurance."

Source: ABCNEWS/Washington Post Oct. 20, 2006

Single payer system will stifle medical research and innovation!

• Much current medical research is publicly-financed through the National Institutes of Health.
• Medical research does not disappear under universal health care.
• Many famous discoveries have been made in countries that have national health care systems; for example, the CT scan was invented in England.

Our taxes will go up!

• Public financing for Medicare and Medicaid would be retained.
• The rest would be financed by a payroll tax on employers (about 7%) and an income tax on individuals (about 2%).
• The payroll tax would replace all other employer expenses for employees’ health care.
• The income tax would take the place of all current insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and any and all other out of pocket payments.