Cindy Zeldin

The New America Foundation is committed to achieving universal health insurance coverage for all people in America. The most promising route to universal coverage is a system that relies on shared responsibility among individuals, employers, and the government. To that end, the New America Foundation has released a series of three papers outlining how to cover all children in California as a first step towards universal coverage. This paper is a component of that series.

For the complete document, please see… more

Recent national research has shown that 85 million people lacked health insurance at some point over a four-year period.1 While some Americans are consistently uninsured, substantial numbers have intermittent coverage. Consider, for example, a family that is currently covered through a parent’s employment-based health insurance. A subsequent job loss could leave that family uninsured until another job with health insurance is secured, the family purchases a non-group health insurance policy, or the family is determined to be eligible for and… more

Health insurance is the gateway to health and to our health care system, yet over five million Californians are uninsured, about 800,000 of whom are children. Having health insurance facilitates access to affordable care from a network of health care providers and shields families from financial ruin in the case of a catastrophic medical emergency.

While most Californians have access to employment-based coverage, a growing number of people either work for firms that do not offer health insurance or cannot… more

In response to a question about the cause of rising health care costs in last week's domestic policy debate, President Bush blamed the rise on a lack of consumer involvement and then declared his support for Health Savings Accounts. On the stump, he frequently trumpets these acounts, known as HSAs, as a way to "own your own health care." Yet under the pretext of restraining health care costs by empowering consumers, HSAs could have precisely the reverse effect. Rather than… more

The American health system is rapidly approaching crisis. For those fortunate enough to have health insurance, health care costs are escalating — health insurance premiums rose almost 14 percent in 2003, the biggest increase in over a decade. For the 43 million people who went without health insurance last year, the system has already collapsed. As more and more people feel the strain of spiraling costs and face the fear of losing coverage entirely, the public increasingly cites these dual… more