As the healthcare debate rages on, I think we need some better understanding of what politicians and healthcare promoters throw out at us in terms of the “uninsured”

44-46 million is the number of uninsured according to the census bureau. But we can’t just trust a number. We kind of need to have an idea of what that number means. The 44-46 number comes from the census bureau which asks respondants about their coverage over the prior year. But for this, we’ll assume the number of 46 million is closer to the truth.

Of that 46 million, it is estimated that ~9 million are not US citizens.

That leaves us with ~37 million uninsured.

We know that of those reporting not having insurance for a period of time in the prior year, 17% earned above $50,000 per year while 9% earned over 75,000. For the sake of our assumption, we’ll assume half of the foreign, 9 million are among the 17% making over $50,000 to give us a roundabout figure of (46million * 17% – 4.5million) 3.32 million

That leaves us at about 34 million uninsured.

The Blue Cross/Blue Shield did a study and found that ~17million of those who were reported as uninsured were actually insurable by existing government programs.

That leaves us with 20 million truly uninsured people. Now we need to add in the “stupid” quotient and factor in the fact that the reported uninsured may have materially screwed up the response which may give us a margin of error of 3%-4%.

I’m more than sure my numbers are not right – and the census bureau somewhat agrees that their numbers may be higher or lower depending on the response quality of the surveys. But when there is a potential that the true number of uninsured and uninsurable can be as much as 50% less without blinking an eye, I have a hard time digesting the answers of a politician who is good at flinging numbers out and not quite so good at comprehending the real value of the number.