The Health Insurance Crisis

There are scores of people without health insurance in the U.S. . For instance, in New Jersey "About 15 percent of the population, or 1.4 million people, has no health insurance and little access to preventative care. Instead, the state pays nearly $1 billion a year to hospitals, which are required to treat the uninsured when they show up at emergency rooms with critical, not-so-critical and chronic illnesses. Hospitals say the reimbursement is insufficient. Many of them operate in the red". Mark V. Pauly, a Wharton School professor, analyzes the issue in a series of articles here .