Number of SE Pa. Residents Without Health Insurance Still Rising, Survey Finds
By David Madden
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A new study shows that the number of adults in Southeastern Pennsylvania without health insurance coverage is increasing.
The biennial report from the Philadelphia-based Public Health Management Corporation is one of the most comprehensive regular studies of its kind of an urban area in the US.
The percentage of uninsured adults in Philadelphia and its suburbs has been slowly rising over the last decade. But recent trends give researcher Rose Malinowski Weingartner a reason to be concerned.
"We're looking at 12.4 percent of adults aged 18 to 64 who are uninsured in our region, and that really means it's about 305,000 adults without any public or private source of health insurance," she tells KYW Newsradio.
That number is 29,000 higher than two years ago, she says. And the reason? Blame the bad economy.
Weingartner hopes the numbers will come down as more people find work, and particularly when Obamacare starts to kick in for real next year.
