There has been some publicity recently regarding the possibility that there are fewer uninsured people in the US than the usual estimate of 45 million uninsureds. While this may be true, like many other arguments about statistics, if you get caught up in the statistical debate, you can easily forget that the real issue is there are tens of millions of uninsureds.

The argument partially stems from a definitional issue - one survey asks if you were uninsured during the previous twelve months, another asks if individuals were uninsured for the entire previous year. Obviously, there are meaningful differences in the question which will elicit different responses. The problem occurs when we focus on the academic issues rather than the overall problem. To quote Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University (source LA TIMES); "Instead of addressing the problem, we say we must count the uninsured. It is literally, in my view, like making sure we know how many deck chairs we have on the Titanic".

Experts questioned about the reasons for the discrepancy alluded to the possibility of undercounting Medicaid recipients, a reluctance on the part of respondents to respond to detailed questions if they answered "yes" to the "did you have insurance…" question, and statistical sampling issues.

What does this mean for you?

The more uninsureds there are, the more taxpayers and other users of the health care system have to pay to subsidize them. The arguments over whether we can afford to cover the uninsureds are uninformed, academic, and to be blunt, stupid. The fact is, we are covering their care, via hidden taxation. The sooner we address this, the sooner we can fairly and publicly allocate their health care expenses.