Lori Aratani reported in The Washington Post on the difficulties officials face when working to draw the uninsured into subsidized health insurance programs. Aratani gives examples from Maryland, Arkansas and Massachusetts and cites a national study (conducted by a nonprofit group underwritten partly by insurers) that found that “about 12 million non-elderly uninsured Americans — about one in four — were eligible for existing state or federal health programs but weren’t enrolled.”
“Even when low-cost health coverage is offered, many people fail to take advantage of it. People don’t think they need coverage, don’t know programs exist or don’t have the money to afford even comparatively inexpensive, subsidized programs.”
Aratani reports that many voluntary health-care programs have struggled to bring in qualified participants and implies that this traditional obstacle may increase the difficulty faced by the Obama administration as it aims to make good on the president’s pledge to extend health coverage to more Americans.
