Who are the uninsured?

Host: Who are the uninsured?

Bob Hurley: The uninsured are made up of a large number of different segments within the uninsured. In fact, when you hear about the uninsured been talked about in the media you really need to stop and think about who are they talking about because it's a very broad segment of people that are in the uninsured number. One of the largest segments actually is those people that are 18-34 years old. In fact, they have make up over a half of the uninsured.

They often are referred to as the young invincibles and that is because simply they don't see the value of having health insurance coverage because they are young and they are healthy and so this is a very significant problem for us to bring those young people into the insurance pools.

Another large segment of the uninsured are what we call newcomers to the country, whether they come to the country legally or illegally these folks are typically not getting into the insurance pools and some of that is a cultural thing. Many of them have come from countries that health insurance may have been provided through the Government and so they simply don't understand our system of health insurance and they simply don't buy into it because they just don't understand it and so they make up of a large segment of our uninsured population.