A recent study conducted by Families USA, a consumer health care advocacy organization, found that 195,000 South Dakota residents have gone uninsured for at least a month between 2006 and 2007. That’s 30% of the state’s population. While the state’s health insurance troubles aren’t as great as Texas where 47% of their population is uninsured, the group’s numbers also brought to another problem: gaps in health insurance coverage.Families USA argues that traditional methods of calculating the number of uninsured Americans is not accurate because the numbers only look at people who have had no coverage for an entire year but ignore those who went at least one month without some type of coverage. Using their revised calculations, more than 90 million Americans had been at least temporarily uninsured between 2006 and 2007. That number is up from 72.5 million between 1999 and 2000. Both figures are considerably than the 47 million uninsured figure currently being cited.
Of course neither figure takes into account the growing problem of the underinsured which is also becoming a major problem in South Dakota. High deducible or co-payment plans can stop people from being able to afford preventative care even when they have health insurance.
