• For poor people, the uninsured rate also declined in 2000 — from 31.1 percent to 29.5 percent. Although medicaid insured 12.4 million poor people, 9.2 million poor people still had no health insurance in 2000.

• Compared with the previous year, health insurance coverage rates increased for those with household incomes below $50,000, decreased for those with household incomes between $50,000 and $75,000, and were unchanged for those with $75,000 and higher household incomes.

• American Indians and Alaska Natives were less likely to have health insurance than other racial groups, based on a 3-year average (1998-2000) — 73.2 percent, compared with 80.5 percent of Blacks, 81.2 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders, and 89.9 percent of White non-Hispanics. However, they were more likely to have insurance than were Hispanics (67.2 percent)

• Among the entire population 18 to 64 years old, workers (both full- and part-time) were more likely to have health insurance (83.8 percent) than nonworkers (76.4 percent), but among the poor, workers were less likely to be covered (54.5 percent) than nonworkers (63.4 percent).

• Young adults (18 to 24 years old) were less likely than other age groups to have health insurance coverage — 72.7 percent in 2000 compared with 84.3 percent of those 25 to 64 and, reflecting widespread medicare coverage, 99.3 percent of those 65 years and over.

• Employment-based insurance, the leading source of health coverage, drove the increase in insurance coverage rates. Most people (64.1 percent) were covered by a health insurance plan related to employment for some or all of 2000, an increase of 0.6 percentage points over the previous year. The increase in private health insurance coverage largely reflects the increase in employment-based insurance, which increased 0.3 percentage points to 72.4 percent in 2000.

-- from the 2000 Census Bureau report link in Tom's post [emphasis mine], of which he seems to have read only the first page.

9.2 million people... hell of a lot to write off. And don't you find it strange, Tom, that once we get past reducing people to statistics, the only meaningful way to talk about this issue is anectodal? As soon as you blew off the numbers as being too small to care about, you even resorted to your own anecdote; rightly so. The point should be simple to see: people are people. Every one of those 9.2 million individual lives ought to deserve the same chance to remain well and undebilitated by injury for their full natural span.

I don't have answers either... but I don't resort to dismissing the question as being statistically insignificant.