Columbia Health Advocates Highlight Gaps in Healthcare Coverage COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - Two new reports have raised concerns among healthcare professionals and advocates nationally - and in Missouri.

A new report by advocacy group Families USA tracks health-insurance practices across the country - and a Commonwealth Fund study reports a dramatic increase in the number of under-insured U.S. adults both were the focus of a press conference called by advocates in Columbia today.

Former Missouri insurance commissioner Jay Angoff was among the group gathered today at the Daniel Boone Regional Library.

Angoff says unfairly differentiating practices between sick and healthy people is a major flaw in the current system of healthcare insurance.

Instead of putting the sick and the healthy all on the same pool, so we all pay for each other. There's a separate mechanism set up, just for the sickest of the sick. And in that mechanism, which is called the high risk pool, rates are very high.



The new report from Families USA highlights the fact that insurance providers in Missouri are not required to offer health care policies to all eligible patients.

And, they aren't required to offer flat rates to everyone - regardless of health status.
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