388,000 Utahns lack health insurance

A year ago next month, the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic think tank, reported that the portion of Utah workers younger than 65 covered by an employer-based insurance plan dropped 8.9 percent between 2000 and 2006, the biggest drop in the nation.

Dollar figures in the trillions needed from taxpayers to bail out the stalled-out U.S. economy are staggering but less than the $2.2 trillion Americans pay in health-care costs each year.

Institute economist Jacob Hacker said a portion of what's spent for the world's most expensive health-care system does in fact buy some excellent medical care. What it mostly goes for, however, is "a medical industrial complex that is enormously wasteful, ill-targeted, inefficient, unfair and falling apart."

According to the state Department of Health, comprehensive health insurance premiums in Utah have risen nearly 70 percent since 1999, or about 9 percent each year. The number of Utahns who have coverage has declined 13 percent since then.

The census survey covers all states and counties across gender, age and income as well as race and ethnic origin.

"In any case, this is the most extensive look ever at county-level demographic characteristics of people with and without health insurance coverage," said Lynn Blewett, director of the Census Bureau's State Health Access Data Assistance Center in Minneapolis.

"Despite some minor data shortcomings, this provides unprecedented information on how health insurance coverage varies county to county and state to state."

The data show that in Utah, Daggett County has the highest proportion of uninsured — 27 percent; while Carbon County has the lowest — 12 percent. Along the Wasatch Front, the percent of uninsured range from a low of 13 percent in Davis County to a high of 18 percent in Utah County, with Salt Lake and Weber counties falling somewhere in between.

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E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com