The lack of adequate health care coverage in this country is a crisis that depletes both the personal health of our population and the nation's financial health. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world in which millions of people cannot access or afford medical care.
- Some 46 million people in the United States lack health insurance coverage; nearly nine million of them are children.
- Eight of 10 people in the United States without insurance are in working families. They are employed, earning a paycheck, and still living without health care coverage.
- An estimated 18,000 people in the United States die each year because they did not have adequate health insurance. That's 49 people per day.
Articles in this special section of Health Progress address the health care reform environment from several different perspectives, but they all do so with the same goal: creating a just health care system that is available to everyone. This is also the focus of CHA's Covering a Nation initiative. Through the resources offered by Covering a Nation — including the articles herein — it is our hope that the many Catholic health care organizations throughout the United States will find inspiration and assistance in coming together to promote wellness for all persons and communities, most especially those who cannot easily obtain health care.
For more information on CHA's Covering a Nation program and how you can get involved, visit www.chausa.org/coveringanation.
The Covering a Nation director, Jeff Tieman, can be reached at (202) 721-6311.
Copyright © 2007 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
For reprint permission, contact Betty Crosby or call (314) 253-3477.