Health

There are a number of issues that fall under the broad category of Health: insurance, healthy life choices, hunger, etc.. While they may not affect you personally, these issues have a significant impact on our community as a whole. And what impacts the community does ultimately impact you. Here are some interesting thoughts:

Health insurance improves a person’s health and their ability to get an education and achieve and maintain productive employment. The Government and taxpayers spend billions of dollars caring for the uninsured as they are more likely to get care from more expensive providers or need more expensive treatment as they are not participating in preventative programs.

Unhealthy life choices (smoking, lack of exercise, etc…) by themselves result in billions of dollars in medical care and lost productivity. Add that to the cost of helping care for the uninsured
and you can see the economic impact in our area.

And hunger…It reaches into every part of our community. Hunger is hurting our economy, our future, our health, our opportunities and our national security.

Some interesting statistics:
• 24% of those under age 65 in Travis County have no health insurance.
• In 2009, 42% of Travis County’s low‐income residents were uninsured.
• 48% of Texas workers had employer‐sponsored health insurance in 2009, compared to
57% in 2000.
• 16% of Travis County residents are food insecure, meaning they have had difficulty
meeting their food needs during the past year.
• 48,000 of our central Texas neighbors look to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas as
their hunger safety net ‐ 20,000 of them are children.

To learn more, check out these websites:

href=”http://www.cppp.org/” target=”_blank”>http://www.cppp.org/