THE UNINSURED ARE NOT PRIMARILY THE POOR AND ELDERLY
J. F. L. MD
Robert J. Blendon, ScD, professor and chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass (and a member of JAMA's editorial board), warned that once Americans get over their initial euphoria about finally having a health care reform plan before Congress, an all-out war will be launched against the plan by those who are most threatened economically by reform...
"Their attacks will exploit the misconceptions and fears commonly held by the public, Blendon says. "It turns out that Americans know what they want, but that they don't know anything about the facts of the debate, so it will be incredibly easy to scare them to death." For example, most Americans wrongly believe that the uninsured are primarily the poor and the elderly. However, two thirds of the uninsured are in working families above the poverty line, he says.
