A Message From The Founder of The BAER Project

Upper-income households are not immune: Growth in the number of uninsured hit the wealthy and the poor about equally last year.

While the working poor make up the biggest chunk of the 45 million Americans who lack insurance, 811,000 people with household incomes above $75,000 joined the ranks of the uninsured in 2005, bringing that group's total to 6.6 million, according to the Census Bureau.

Hardest hit in higher income groups are those who run their own businesses, early retirees or consultants, who must buy coverage in the individual market, where policies are more expensive - and harder to get - than those offered to employer groups.

"If they're struggling, even on $60,000 or $75,000, to pay the mortgage and send kids to college and suddenly have to buy their own insurance, they learn that it costs $8,000 to buy a family policy. Uwe Reinhardt a Princeton economist says. "To some extent, it is a very good thing that these middle- and upper-income folks are getting into this fix," "They used to think, 'This is just a lower-class problem,' one faced by their gardener or cab driver. Then it hits them."

According to recent data many of the uninsured are working people, freelancers, self-employed or those working for companies that have eliminated or reduced their "employer sponsored" insurance programs due to costs.

The impact is felt by Insurance Companies witnessing greater numbers of policy cancellations, Hospitals closing or eliminating services because they cannot collect from uninsured patients that received emergency treatment and most important by children who are not properly treating childhood illness and diseases which become problems as they reach adulthood.

According to an article in USToday quoting the Commonwealth Fund. - The percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41% in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28% in 2001 without coverage.

Moreover, more than half of the uninsured adults said they were having problems paying their medical bills or had incurred debt to cover their expenses, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private health care policy foundation. The study of 4,350 adults also found that people without insurance were more likely to forgo recommended health screenings such as mammograms than those with coverage, and were less likely to have a regular doctor than their insured counterparts.

Reasons higher-income households don't have insurance vary: Some are starting businesses and can't afford extra expenses. Some are victims of the weak economy, laid off and uninsured. Some are healthy and willing to take a chance they'll stay that way.

Then there are those who got sick - even with mild conditions - and can't find an insurer willing to offer them a policy.

The report paints a bleak health care picture for the uninsured. "It represents an explosion of the insurance crisis into those with moderate incomes," said Sara Collins, a senior program officer at the Commonwealth Fund.

Collins said the study also illustrates how more employers are dropping coverage or are offering plans that are just too expensive for many people.

The study also found that 59% of uninsured with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes either skipped a dose of their medicine or went without it because it was too expensive.

That study found that cost prevented 41.1% of uninsured adults from seeing a doctor, compared to 9.2% of individuals with coverage.

Meanwhile, 51% of women without health insurance haven't had a mammogram in two years, compared to 22.8% of women with insurance.

And 76.3% of uninsured men between the ages of 40 to 64 haven't had the PSA test, which detects prostate cancer, in two years. That compares to 52.2% of their insured counterparts.

Fortunately there are many agencies, governmental and private that are committed to reversing this trend. The BAER Project is one.

Hello my name is David Claggett, founder of The BAER Project, Inc.

When developing this program our initial focus was on helping low-income families, specifically those with children who were not receiving adequate or needed health care. Our mission was to find solutions to that problem.

It was overwhelming to find such a large percentage of working and middle-income families who were also uninsured and at risk of being financially devastated by unexpected emergency medical expenses.

As a non-profit corporation we developed a program that offers a solution. Fortunately our nonprofit status allows us to turn the revenue we generate into premium payments to pay for health insurance for our subscribers.

This program offers a unique opportunity for those who qualify to provide health care coverage for their families without the stress of wondering how they will pay for it.