Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
Summary
The United States stands alone among developed nations in not providing publicly funded health care coverage to all citizens as a basic right. Rather than a universal and comprehensive tax-based system of care, our health care financing system consists of three main components: private insurance, consisting mostly of group plans sponsored by employers; Medicare for those over sixty-five; and a means-tested system of public coverage for poor children, the disabled, and low-income elderly individuals. Unfortunately, these three components are far from comprehensive. More than forty-five million Americans have no health care coverage of any sort, and millions more have episodic and inadequate coverage. As a consequence, the health care they receive is often inadequate, and their health is placed at risk. Although many of those without coverage receive charitable care or are seen at emergency rooms, they enjoy neither the continuity of care nor the high-quality care that fully insured Americans expect. As we demonstrate in this book, the lack of adequate health care coverage is part of a vicious cycle in which the poor face more serious risks to their health and receive less adequate preventive and acute care. Because minority Americans are more likely than majority Americans to be poor, this health and productivity penalty takes on an aspect of color. African Americans live shorter lives on average than white Americans do, and they suffer disproportionately from the preventable consequences of the diseases of poverty.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Poor Families in America's Health Care Crisis , pp. vii - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006