Americans who lack health insurance will spend about 30 billion dollars out of pocket on medical care this year, but others -- mainly the government -- will end up covering another 56 billion dollars in costs, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The tab to cover all the uninsured would be 208.6 billion dollars -- 122.6 billion dollars more than this year's projected total -- mainly because people with insurance tend to use more health-care services, the paper quoted a report by researchers as saying.
The report from researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the Urban Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., is to be published Monday in the journal Health Affairs online.
Health-care spending accounted for 16.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2007, or about 2.2 trillion dollars, and that amount could nearly double in 10 years, according to federal figures. More of the cost is expected to shift to the government, even as it seeks to shrink large deficits.
The new study estimates the government pays 75 percent, or 42.9 billion dollars, of the amount uninsured patients can't pay -- through Medicaid, the federal-state health-insurance for the poor and Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, as well as state and local taxes.
Source:Xinhua
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