About 46 million Americans are with out health insurance. About a million of them live in Michigan. And that's not very healthy.

For many of the uninsured, that is going without health care. For others, it means being consumed by the medical bills, debt and, for some, bankruptcy.

Michigan residents are little better off than the nation as a whole. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in 2004, 12 percent of Michigan residents never had coverage, compared to 17 percent of all Americans. That is the result of Michigan's unionized auto industry that has offered generous health insurance benefits to workers. But few all know that those generous health insurance benefits are eating some domestic automakers also alive. And as jobs in Michigan's auto sector dry up, there were fewer people with health insurance.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm, in her State of the State speech, announced her Michigan FIRST health care plan that is intended to make affordable health insurance available to a half-million workers and not eligible for Medicaid but without employer-based health insurance.

Locally, organizations like the Family Health Center and also the First Presbyterian Church health clinic had provided low-cost health care for the uninsured.

But they are no substitute for a comprehensive health insurance program that leaves no American uninsured.