This week personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary examined how the lack of affordable health insurance, and increasing number of uninsured Americans, affects all U.S. residents, even those with health coverage.

As it's reported at Kaiser's Daily Health Policy Report, the cost of coverage for U.S. residents who have insurance is increasing because the number of uninsured keeps rising. According to a Families USA study, "unpaid health care expenses for the uninsured added an average $922 in 2005 to premiums for employer-sponsored health plans, and the extra costs could increase to $1,502 in 2010."

And this doesn't take into account the lack of affordable health insurance for small business owners, who more and more are forced to shift the burden of coverage to their employees. It's known that individual policy holders pay the price for the uninsured too, though their costs are harder to gauge.

Politicians and health care specialists alike have been arguing for several years that by making affordable health insurance available to all Americans, we could actually save money in medical malpractice costs and lowered health care premiums. However, this is one of the first studies to publicly uncover exactly how much the insured are forced to pay when the uninsured can't afford coverage.