Series Part 3: Health Care at a Glance

• Editors note: This is the third of a four-part series on health care, following a Monday, Aug. 20, forum at Pheasant Run in St. Charles.

General facts about health care, as laid out Monday by Kenneth Munson, the regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

• Most people have relied for decades on their employers for health care insurance. But that practice has been declining for years. As recently as the early 1990s, about 60 percent of people got their coverage through their employers. That has dropped to about 40 percent in 2006-07 and is continuing to drop.
• About 96 percent of large businesses with more than 50 employees have provided health care coverage, but it has become progressively difficult for small businesses to be able to afford to provide that coverage.
• 50 million people in the country do not have health coverage, and about 75 percent of those are working for a small business that cannot afford the coverage.
• 72 people die each day because they do not have health coverage.
• For those with private insurance — costs of premiums going up and up and up.
• For those who have private health care, about $1,000 to $1,400 of their premiums each year actually goes to those who are not covered.
• The 50 million people who do not have coverage receive health care, but it is often at the wrong place (such as a hospital emergency room), at the wrong time (when the illness/condition has progressed to the point where it is very expensive to treat), which could have been prevented if it had been treated at an earlier stage.

Related:

• Part 1: 
• Part 2: 
• Part 3: Health Care at a Glance
• Part 4: