5-03-05, 9:57 am
The lack of access to health care coverage is growing and it may be costing lives, says recent analysis provided by the University of Maryland and the Urban Institute.
According to the results of this analysis, 49 percent of uninsured adults with chronic conditions went without needed medical care or prescription drugs due to cost in 2003. Uninsured adults were four times as likely to go without medical care or prescription drugs than insured adults because of their inability to pay. They were more than seven times as likely not to have a regular source of health care.
Other data paints a shocking picture:
According to the Department of Commerce, 45 million people, or 15.6 percent of the total population, lacked health insurance in 2003, up from 15.2 percent in the previous year. Additionally, this number has grown steadily since 1987 by nearly 30 percent with a small dip in the last two years of the Clinton presidency.
More than two of five people earning less than $5,000 annually don't have health care coverage. Over half of households earning less than 200 percent of the poverty level (roughly $39,000 for a family of four) lack coverage. But lack of coverage doesn't just hit the poorest sections of the population:
Other surveys also show that most people prioritize health care among the top domestic issues facing the country.
A poll conducted at the end of March by Public Opinion Strategies in Alexandria, Va., found that 73 percent of those surveyed are concerned about losing their health care coverage and that improving access to affordable health insurance and coverage should be a top-tier issue for President Bush and Congress.
Respondents were asked, 'In addition to concerns about terrorism, national security, and the situation in Iraq, which ONE of the following issues do you believe should be the next highest priority for Congress and the President?' The top issue for voters surveyed was Social Security/Medicare (27 percent), followed by 'access to affordable health insurance and coverage' (24 percent), and in third, 'jobs and the economy' (23 percent).
The results of these two studies, and others, have led to the kick-off of Cover the Uninsured Week, a nonpartisan campaign to focus attention on the need to secure reliable, affordable health coverage for all. Covering the Uninsured is a coalition composed of business, labor, non-profit organizations, health associations, health insurance companies, faith-based organizations, and more.
Its spokespersons include, former presidents, former US Surgeons General, actors, and other public figures.
Of the unaddressed crisis in health crisis, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D. said, 'To be blunt, uninsured patients are more likely to die than their insured counterparts with the same diagnosis.'
Cover the Uninsured Week will see hundreds of health fairs nationwide to provide free medical screenings and information to those without insurance. Volunteers will help enroll eligible uninsured adults and children in public programs that provide free or low-cost coverage. Business seminars will discuss ways for small business owners to provide affordable health plans for their employees. Faith community leaders will be talking about this issue and getting congregants involved in efforts to help people who are uninsured.
A Good Start, But What's the Program?
This massive weeklong effort will likely build enormous public focus on the issue of the crisis of health care coverage and the failure of the system to adequately take care of millions of people.
But what is the program? What solution will this coalition offer? Is there something new, an alternative to the current failed system, or is it just more of the same?
Another diverse collection of public voices is pushing for a more specific national solution: a single-payer health care coverage plan that would provide universal coverage, reduce overall administrative costs, and effectively control the skyrocketing costs of drugs and services.
Two unlikely voices in this group are the Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Two automakers that have seen their global competitiveness fall along with their bottom lines, as the failure to address the health care crisis has increased their health care liabilities to their employees and retirees.
GM alone expects to pay $5.8 billion this year in health care coverage costs, according to the Labor Research Association (LRA). Almost 29 percent of compensation to workers throughout the private manufacturing sector, in fact, is in health benefits as compared with 16 and 17 percent in other industrialized countries like Japan, Canada, and the UK.
But the difference in compensation doesn't pay for better coverage or care. As much as 75 percent of the difference, says LRA, pays for private health insurance administrative costs. Lower compensation in other countries results from lower costs, controlled inflation, and massive public investment in their universal health care programs.
The autoworkers’ union and other industrial unions like United Steelworkers also support a national single-payer plan that would relieve the manufacturing sector of its massive health care burden and allow it to recover.
One proposal gaining more national attention is a to expand Medicare and provide coverage for everyone. Its supporters say that H.R. 676 creates a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to cover all US residents.
Because Medicare is a low-cost, efficiently administered program, its expansion would eliminate an estimated $150 billion annually in costs in the current system. Bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and an expanded risk pool would also reduce costs further and control rates of inflation.
Employers would also see great benefit. Small business owners could afford a low payroll tax per employee of around 3 percent and not have to worry about expensive health care benefits packages, reducing turnover of workers and stabilizing profit margins. Larger employers would see their liabilities for health care benefits for current workers and retirees shrink by more than half of the current average costs.
Most importantly near total elimination of the failures of the current system described above would vanish.
'A national health care system is the one thing Congress could do to bring some fiscal sanity to the U.S. economy, help decrease the costs of health care, and save the personal budgets of millions of American families,' says Marilyn Clement, Coordinator of the Campaign for a National Health Program NOW, an organization that has endorsed H.R. 676.
So while it is important to build a broad consensus for much needed health care reform, it is equally important to help build momentum to a viable program that can actually solve the problem.
--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
