Doing some research… and here are some more worrisome numbers.
Looking more closely at the broadest measure of unemployment: The 12.5% figure is up from 8.4% a year earlier. In other words, the unemployed and under-employed and marginally employed stands at 19.3 million workers versus 12.9 million employees a year ago. (The number of unemployed at the official unemployment rate of 6.7% is 10.3 million.)
Also looking at some figures compiled by the Commonwealth Fund. This stood out to me: 41% of working age adults or 72 million people reported having problems in 2007 paying their medical bills or were paying off accrued medical debt. Low and moderate income families were especially hard hit with more than half of adults with incomes under $40,000 reported medical bills problems in 2007.
When it comes to medical bills it’s a safe forecast that the figures deteriorated from the abysmal 2007 numbers in 2008. Imagine how terrible the experience will be next year for the average working family without a major healthcare initiative from Washington in 2009?
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