The U.S. Census Bureau has just announced that the poverty rate for 2008 was 13.2%. This means the number of people in poverty has increased by about 2.5 million, to 39.8 million. To give you some perspective, 2.5 million is more than the number of people who live in Detroit and San Francisco combined.

Things would have been worse but for one thing: continued expansion of government-provided health insurance coverage. Between 2007 and 2008, the proportion of Americans reporting any private coverage fell by 0.8 percentage points, from 67.5 percent to 66.7 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage reporting some form of government coverage rose by 1.2 points, from 27.8 percent to 29.0 percent [...]

First, the absolute number of uninsured has increased. Second, employer-based coverage is eroding. Third, adverse trends in private coverage are partly masked in the overall numbers by the rise in public coverage.

Fourth, improved insurance coverage among children--thanks largely to Medicaid and SCHIP--is more than offset by increases in the number and proportion of uninsured working-age adults. As shown in the final column, the number of uninsured adults increased by almost 9 million in nine years. Since working-age adults are much more likely to actually get sick, this is a significant economic and public health concern.

In 2008, fire departments around the country responded to 15.8 million medicals calls, a 213 percent increase over the 5 million medical runs record in 1980. The combining of cities’ fire and emergency medical services accounts for some of the increase.

But as the logs of a Washington, D.C., fire company show, the lack of health insurance by too many people—especially low-income families—has turned some local fire departments into mobile emergency rooms.

In one 24-hour period this summer, D.C.’s Engine Company No. 10 responded to more than two dozen emergency calls—two fires and the rest were medical emergencies. It is the same throughout the District. The Times reports the D.C. fire department responded to more medical emergency calls per capita than any other in the nation—and most come from poor neighborhoods [...] such calls tie up a community’s resources and cost communities more because so many calls for emergency medical care aren’t true medical emergencies. Also, the increasing reliance on first responders and on 911 also comes at a time when firefighters and paramedics all across the country are being laid off, as the nation’s economic woes place a strain on public budgets. The recession is shrinking our resources and reducing manpower while the demand for emergency medical care is skyrocketing.