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This past week was Cover the Uninsured Week. Cover the Uninsured Week is a national effort that seeks to bring attention to the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance.

Statistics show that 47 million Americans, including over 9 million children, lack health care coverage. State programs have been created in an attempt to reduce the amount of uninsured.

One such program is S-CHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was created in 1997 to cover children whose families earn too much money to quality for Medicaid but too little to purchase private health insurance.

Another program is BadgerCare, which serves the state of Wisconsin by providing health care to children under the age of 19 and their families regardless of income.

In addition to these, Medicare and Medicaid are national assistance programs. Medicare is designed to assist people age 65 and older and Medicaid assists the low-income and disabled.

Still, as a country, the United States falls short of other countries. In 2003, the United States spent 15 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, the highest percentage of industrialized countries. The average percentage of GDP spent on health care in other industrialized countries was 8.6 percent.

Furthermore, only 44 percent of health spending is funded by government revenues; well below the average of 72 percent in fellow industrialized countries.

More needs to be done to bring about a solution to this issue. The best way to do this is to increase awareness about the issue by becoming involved with Cover the Uninsured Week. There are many ways to get involved, including organizing a health coverage forum, contacting a state or national representative, distributing information, and spreading the word in general.

We must acknowledge that the excessive number of uninsured individuals is unacceptable and we must demand solutions from our nation's leaders. More information about Cover the Uninsured Week and how to get involved can be found on our Web page at www.geocities.com/missingpieces08.