Insurance Center

According to press secretary Robert Gibbs the purported aim of Mr. Obama's speech that was given Saturday in Minneapolis was essentially to emphasize for all Americans what is ahead for them if the Congress were to fail to pass a health care reform plan.

A current Treasury Department report, according to Obama, makes clear what will happen. The report includes information that was received from 17,123 Americans during a period ranging from 1997 to 2006 that only recently was analyzed by the Treasury. Results indicate that that decade, fully 48 percent of those surveyed report not having health insurance for at least one month, while 41 percent say they were without coverage for at least six months, and 36 percent report being without coverage for a complete year.

The time that was spent without having insurance coverage was calculated cumulatively over the decade rather than consecutively.

A senior Treasury Department official is reported as saying that many Americans have a misperception that protections and benefits for the uninsured are helping only a small number of Americans, and that is not the case. He was speaking with reporters on a conference call with the understanding that he would not be identified. He says that the report shows that any American can find him or herself without health insurance.
Over recent months polls have shown that the majority of Americans indicate being increasingly satisfied with their health care while increasing numbers are hesitant to spend more money on what they view as being a minority of their fellow citizens who are without coverage.
It is the hope of the administration that this current Treasury Department report showing that it is not just a minority of Americans who are at risk under the current system, will change their thinking on this matter.

The senior Treasury official who spoke with the press said that the new report shows that it can happen to anyone and does to almost half of Americans during a ten year period.

He said that the president will be using these data to back up his position that maintaining the status quo is not acceptable, and that the status quo means that half of Americans will be allowed to go without proper health care insurance during the next decade.

The report is being released at a time when the official number of American’s without health insurance figure being used by the president is being adjusted. The figure used by President Obama in his speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, was 30 million instead of the 46 million figure that he and other supporters of health care reform have been using repeatedly for over a year.

In his radio address to the nation on Saturday , President Obama again used the 30 million figure.

Another spokesman for the Treasury Department has said that the number of uninsured was in the upper 30s of millions. Critics of the 46 million figure have argued that it includes immigrants who are not in the U.S. legally.