As the Obama administration and Congress continue work on extending health insurance coverage to 50 million Americans who currently are uninsured, they'll no doubt be using a new report as one possible basis for urgency regarding the issue.

Indeed, a couple of statistics contained in the report are likely to be eye-openers for people who might not have considered the cost they incur as a result of the uninsured receiving health care services for which they are unable to pay.

Those statistics are that the average family with health insurance pays out an extra $1,000 a year in premiums to pay for the health care that the uninsured receive. The average individual with private coverage pays an extra $370 a year, the report says.

In one scenario described by an insurance executive, when a hospital provides free care to a significant number of people without insurance who arrive, for example, at the emergency room, the hospital ultimately must raise its rates to insurance companies to recoup the unpaid amounts. In turn, insurance companies pass that on to policyholders in the form of higher premiums.

The report in question, which was released by the advocacy group Families USA, indicates that in 2008, uninsured people received $116 billion in health care from hospitals, doctors and other providers.

According to the report, which was compiled by an independent actuarial consulting firm using federal data, the uninsured paid 37 percent of the $116 billion out of their own pockets, and government programs and charities covered another 26 percent.

That left about $43 billion unpaid, which made its way into premiums charged by private insurance companies to businesses and individuals.

According to an article in Thursday's Butler Eagle, the major government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid are structured in a way that doesn't easily allow payments to insurers to adjust upward. And, as the article pointed out, "somebody has to pay."

The report's findings are consistent with Families USA's support of the government extending coverage to the 50 million Americans without coverage who, despite that lack of coverage, still get sick.

Meanwhile, the unpaid health care bills for those afflicted with long-term medical conditions obviously are much bigger.

Families USA calls the hit on the pockets of people with insurance coverage, and the companies that provide health insurance to their employees, a "hidden tax." In fact, that is an apt description.

Nevertheless, there are divergent opinions as to how the lack of insurance coverage affecting so many Americans should be addressed. Again, "somebody has to pay" and that somebody will be the nation's taxpayers.

The question is what shape that payment will take.

In the end, whatever option emerges won't please everyone. Much opposition will be based on lack of understanding about this complex issue and the failure to acknowledge that even when someone doesn't pay for the health care they receive, the provider of that care, in most instances, doesn't absorb or "eat" that cost. It is passed on to someone else.

Whether, or how much, the Families USA report will influence the Obama administration and Congress as they debate this health care coverage issue is something that cannot be known now. However, it will raise the awareness of many more people who had embraced the notion that the problem of the uninsured was strictly somebody else's problem.

It isn't, and in one form or another, it will continue to be their problem, no matter what President Barack Obama and Congress decide.