ABSTRACT
Americans paid out more for health care in the Bush years but got no more in return. The United States is the only major industrialized country without universal health care. Some 64 percent of Americans received employment-based health insurance in 2000, but that percentage declined to 59.7 by 2006. The annual cost of family health insurance premiums in 2000 was $7,643. The number of Americans without health insurance increased from 38.4 million in 2000 to 46.9 million in 2006. Driven by ideology and beholden to private insurance firms, the Bush administration delivered a double whammy to public health: It permitted the number of uninsured Americans to increase and fostered greater income inequality. Poverty correlated with single moms struggling to shield offspring from street violence, drug addiction, and jail. A health problem the United States does not share with other rich nations is deaths by firearms.
