Going to the Emergency Room? Get in Line Behind the Others

The next time your son breaks his arm and must wait six hours to see a doctor in the emergency room, thank the government for the inadequacy of public insurance programs. There are 10 million uninsured children in the United States; 8 million of these uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid, a public health insurance program. This high number of uninsured children directly results from increases in the number of families lacking health insurance every year since 1987. In the United States, approximately one in four persons in the nonelderly population lacks health insurance. These…