With the Supreme Court ruling Thursday that President Barack Obama's federal
health care overhaul can go forward, here's a look at numbers on Georgia
health care and insurance.
Number of uninsured: 19.4 percent of Georgians, 1.9 million people,
lacked insurance coverage in 2010, compared with 16.3 percent of Americans
nationwide.
How Georgians have fared
851,076 -- Medicare beneficiaries who received free preventive services
or wellness visits with their doctor last year.
123,000 -- Young adults who gained insurance coverage as a result of
the law as of December 2011.
106,922 -- Medicare recipients who received a $250 rebate to bridge the
donut hole gap in 2010
102,366 -- Medicare beneficiaries who received a 50 percent discount
on brand name prescription drugs last year. That represents an average
savings of $573 per person and statewide savings of more than $58.6 million.
3.3 million -- People, including nearly 1.3 million women and 916,000
kids, who no longer have to worry about lifetime limits on health benefits
2,066 -- Previously uninsured people with pre-existing conditions are
now insured through the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan as of April
2012.
Who's insured in Georgia and how
- Since 2000, the likelihood of having employment-based coverage among the non-elderly
has fallen from more than 75 percent to less than 55 percent.
- Roughly 90 percent of Georgians with private insurance coverage obtain that insurance
through an employment-based plan.
- Of non-elderly Georgians who live in a family headed by a full-time, full-year worker,
69 percent have employment-based health insurance. That percentage falls
to approximately 35 percent for those whose family head experienced some unemployment
during the year, and to 15 percent for families headed by a non-worker.
- Less than a third of non-elderly Georgians whose family head is employed by a firm
with fewer than 10 employees has employment-based health benefits versus 72
percent employed by firms with 100-plus workers.
- Less than one in five of those with family incomes below 138 percent of poverty
have employer-sponsored insurance coverage, compared with 81 percent of
those earning four or more times the poverty level.
- Some 80 percent of all uninsured individuals live in a family headed by someone
with at least some attachment to the workforce.
- Georgians whose family head is working at firms with less than 10 employees make
up 16 percent of the population but account for more than 29 percent without
coverage.
- Families whose family head is working at Georgia’s smallest firms are
more likely to be uninsured (38 percent), compared with families headed
by non-workers (32 percent).
- On average, Georgians spend $170 less out-of-pocket than the national average for
health care services.
Impact on metro Atlanta companies
- Total health benefit costs for large employers (500 or more workers) in metro Atlanta
increased 6.5 percent in 2011, to an average of $10,551 per employee. This
compares to a 9 percent increase and $10,486 for all Atlanta employers and
a 6.1 percent increase and $10,146 for all employers nationally.
- Atlanta companies estimated that in 2012, if they made no changes to their current
plans, costs would rise 7.7 percent. But they expected to hold cost increases
to 4.9 percent by making changes.
- Some 67 percent of Atlanta companies planned to shift cost to their employees in
2012 by raising deductibles, copays/coinsurance or out-of-pocket
maximums, increasing employees’ share of the premium contribution
or other ways.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, Mercer, Georgia State University
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