As part of its fight for health-care reform, the White House said Thursday that 90 percent of the Utahns who lack health insurance live in middle-class working families.
"I'm often asked: Who are these Americans without health insurance?" said Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. "The uninsured are your middle-income working neighbors."Bentsen released for the Clinton administration a study looking at who lacks health insurance in each state and in each House district.
It said that 204,000 of Utah's 1.7 million residents - or 12 percent - lacked health insurance in 1993, based on Census estimates.
But it said that 184,000 of them lived in families where a breadwinner had worked at least sometime during 1992.
So the study said 90.2 percent of the people who lacked health insurance in Utah lived in what the Clinton administration considers middle-class working families.
It also released figures for each of the House districts in Utah:
- In the 1st District, represented by Jim Hansen, R-Utah, it said 63,000 people lacked health insurance, including 20,000 children. It said 57,000 of them (90.4 percent) lived in working families.
- In the 2nd District, represented by Karen Shepherd, D-Utah, it said 66,000 people lacked health insurance, including 19,000 children. It said 60,000 of them (90.5 percent) lived in working families.
- In the 3rd District, represented by Bill Orton, D-Utah, it said 75,000 people lacked health insurance, including 26,000 children. It said 67,000 of them lived in working families.
Nationally, Bentsen said 37 million people are uninsured and 84 percent are in working families.
"One in three is a member of a family making more than $30,000 a year," Bentsen said. "Most uninsured either have an employer who doesn't provide coverage, or the worker can't afford to buy it without help."
He added, "If you have insurance, it's easy to say: `The uninsured don't affect me. That's their problem.' But it's your problem too because insurance costs are higher; taxes are higher because of higher federal health costs; and Americans who lose their jobs may well join the uninsured."