How Healthy Is Ohio?

The US Department of Health and Human Services has a website called healthreform.gov, which has a wealth of information about how stressed people in this country are to pay for health care. It's got a little map of the U.S., and if you click on your state, you can get statsistics on how many unisured there are, how many have coverage from their employer, what competiton among insurance providers is like etc. Ohio is ranked "average" in health care, which is hardly reassuring given the state of health care in the U.S.

http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/statehealthreform/ohio.html

Among the facts:
* Roughly 7.4 million people in Ohio get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $12,689 about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.2
* Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 92 percent in Ohio.3
* Household budgets are strained by high costs: 20 percent of middle-income Ohio families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.4
* High costs block access to care: 12 percent of people in Ohio report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.5
* Ohio businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $1,000 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.

What's interesting to me is that a department within the Obama administration has put up a site that's clearly an advocacy site for health-care reform, which leads me to think those who say nothing's going to change may be a tad pessimistic. But keep calling Sherrod Brown, George Voinovich and your representative!