LANSING – Residents in Michigan lost private coverage insurance coverage faster on average than did residents in the other states, a study conducted by the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation released Monday said.

The study looked at changes in health insurance from 2003-04 to 2007-08 and found that with the ongoing economic difficulties, the state had 4.5 percent fewer people covered by private coverage in the latter years than it did in the earlier years.

And the years examined ended just before the depth of the latest recession struck in early 2009, driving state unemployment to slightly more than 15 percent at its worst.

Michigan still has more people covered by health insurance than most states, but the center, headed by Marianne Udow-Phillips, former director of the Department of Human Services, said the trend was heading in a bad direction. Between those two time frames, 4.5 percent fewer people were covered by private health insurance, the report said.

The report also said some 3.8 million residents were either covered by a public program, such as Medicaid or Medicare, or had no health insurance coverage. In fact, some 37 percent of individuals who were eligible for those programs still had no insurance.

The percentage of the state budget going to pay for Medicaid coverage continued to increase even as the state cut back on payments to physicians and other providers, the report said.

The total paid in uncompensated care by hospitals nearly doubled in the four-year period, up by some 94 percent, to about $2 billion worth of care, the report said.

The report also looked at the potential effects under the new national health care law passed earlier in the year. The report said some 700,000 could benefit from subsidies to get health insurance, and some 144,000 small businesses could get tax benefits. By 2014, when all effects of the law are to kick in, some 1.1 million residents in the state could get coverage through newly created health care exchanges.

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