Washington state’s health care system and people who buy health insurance are paying more than half a billion dollars a year to provide health care for the state’s 748,000 people without health insurance, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler announced on Thursday with the release of a new report.

The uninsured are getting health care, it’s just that everyone else is paying for it, he contends, because the costs of caring for the uninsured are passed along by providers in the form of higher charges to those who are insured and their carriers.

The report looked at the uninsured rates for 2002 and 2004 and found they had risen more than 6 percent in the two-year period, while the cost burden grew by 21 percent.

Members will be choosing from among 60 proposals, including one by Kreidler that proposes universal coverage and a nonprofit group of stakeholders to keep the details about lowering costs, and who should be responsible for various areas of health care.

Harrison Medical Center likely eats the bulk of the cost to the health care system in Kitsap. In the hospital’s most recent fiscal year, it provided $6.5 million in uncompensated care and wrote off as bad debt another $10.5 million in unpaid hospital bills, said Jim Rawson, Harrison’s chief financial officer.

Kreidler predicts that the number of uninsured will continue to rise. Many health care experts predict the same thing, and blame it on the steeply escalating costs of health care and health insurance, which are driving many employers to drop or greatly reduce health insurance benefits for workers.

Kreidler says federal inaction puts the onus on states to take measures like Massachusetts, which recently enacted a mandatory health insurance program for all residents.

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