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We've been understandably focused on the details of health reform legislation: Will our benefits get taxed? Will there be a public option? What will premiums be? Who will be eligible for coverage? Of course, we need to think about these questions - it's important to get health reform right. But it's also worth remembering why we need health reform in the first place.
More than 2,000 veterans died last year because they didn't have health insurance, according to new estimates from Harvard researchers released for Veterans' Day.
Using Census Bureau survey data, the researchers, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein, professors at Harvard's medical school, estimated there are nearly 1.5 million veterans under the Medicare age of 65 who are uninsured and who aren't getting care from VA treatment programs.
Citing an earlier study that being uninsured increases the chance of death by 40%, they estimate that 2,266 veterans died last year because they didn't have insurance. That is, as they point out, "14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001."
"Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people - too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care," . Woolhandler said. "As a result, veterans go without the care they need every day in the U.S., and thousands die each year. It's a disgrace."
Health reform, such as H.R. 3962, just passed by the House, would make coverage more available to veterans and other uninsured working people by providing subsidies for moderate-income workers and by preventing insurance companies from denying coverage or jacking up premiums because of pre-existing medical conditions.
– 11/11/09
Lance Armstrong is known and admired around the world for coming back from cancer treatment to resume bicycle racing and win the prestigious Tour de France seven times. Less well known is that Armstrong was between teams and uninsured when he got cancer, and he struggled to get coverage because he had a pre-existing condition. Eventually, one of his sponsors muscled its insurer into covering him, a story Armstrong told on his blog today, on the anniversary of his cancer diagnosis.
Not every cancer patient is a world-famous bicycle racer, so not every cancer patient is able to get help with insurance problems. Even insured cancer patients often have trouble avoiding serious medical debt because of coverage limits and co-payments. A dramatic report by the American Cancer Society tells the story of 20 insured patients who couldn't pay for the treatment they needed.
Armstrong, a fierce competitor on or off the bike, is fighting back. Health reform would prevent people from being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, would end annul and lifetime limits on benefits, and would limit out-of-pocket payments. Armstrong is asking people to support reform and sign a petition based on two principles:
- No American should be denied health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
- No American should lose their insurance due to changes in health or employment.
– 10/02/09
People without health insurance are 40% more likely to die than those with private insurance, according to a new study published in the Journal of Public Health. That means lack of insurance may be responsible for as many at 45,000 deaths a year.
The authors, who are affiliated with Harvard Medical Study, drew their conclusions by taking data from a survey that tracks the health of people from 1986 to 1994. In comparing the death rates of insured and uninsured, they controlled statistically "for factors such as obesity, exercise habits, alcohol use, and smoking status," according to the health news Web site MedPage Today
"Despite widespread acknowledgment that enacting universal coverage would be life saving, doing so remains politically thorny," the study authors said,. "Now that health reform is again on the political agenda, health professionals have the opportunity to advocate universal coverage."
An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that there are 18,000 "excess deaths" a year from lack of insurance.
Those who oppose reform often argue that the system is fine the way it is, and that uninsured people are getting the care they need. These studies show that's not true.
– 09/29/09
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Source: U.S. Census Bureau |
The number of uninsured in the United States rose in 2008, to 46.3 million, up from 45.7 million in 2007, according to an annual survey by the Census Bureau. That's not a surprise - this is the seventh increase in the eight years since 2000, when the number stood at 38.4 million. So that's about eight million more uninsured just in this decade.
The actual number is surely even worse now - likely well over 50 million -- because of the job losses in the year and half since the data was collected, Lisa Dubay, a professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins, pointed out on the Web site of the policy journal Health Affairs.
The Census numbers show more than a million people lost employer-provided insurance coverage during the year studied. The greatest decline in coverage occurred among middle-class families, according to an analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
However, public programs such as Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) served as a safety net, covering more people, especially children, as employer-provided coverage continued to shrink.
"What does this mean for health care reform?" Dubay wrote. "The current economic downturn has made uninsurance a bigger problem for Congress to fix and drives home the importance of developing a reform plan that protects Americans and States in tough economic times. The experience of Medicaid and CHIP illustrates that strong public insurance options can provide coverage to Americans when the economy tanks, when a parent loses a job, and when no affordable options for health insurance exist. "
– 09/17/09
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Source: Huffington Post |
Darlene Daniels, of Baltimore, has a serious and chronic condition, sarcodosis, an inflammation of body organs. She is insured, but her insurance has an annual cap on benefits, so she's been left with $30,000 in bills and is skipping needed visits to heart, lung and eye doctors because she can't afford them.
Peter Gaytan, of Alexandria, Va., was having stomach pain, and a specialist said he needed a colonoscopy. It took several months to get the insurance company to approve the exam - which found a giant tumor. The insurance covered only part of the cost of his cancer surgery and chemotherapy.
Katie Gibson, of Bozeman, Mont., is a cancer survivor, who had trouble finding insurance when she and her husband moved to Montana because of her "pre-existing condition." Eventually, she found a policy, but the insurance company increased her deductible from $5,000 to $25,000. She switched to another insurer with a lower deductible - only to have her coverage cancelled a few months later.
What these three have in common - besides being unfortunate examples of the lack of security even insured people have in the United States - is that they sat with Michelle Obama last week while President Barack Obama spoke to Congress about the need for health reform.
As pointed out by Jonathan Cohn on the blog The Treatment on the Web site of The New Republic magazine, they're a reminder of what health reform is about. Cohn runs down the Obama guest list.
The Denver Daily News tells the story of another Obama guest, Nathan Wilkes of Englewood, Colo. Wilkes has a six-year-old son, Thomas, with a rare blood disorder. The insurance company tried to cut off coverage. Nathan Wilkes and his wife considered getting a divorce so Thomas could qualify for Medicaid. Instead, Nathan Wilkes quit his job and took a pay cut to start a business - just so he could buy stable coverage.
– 09/15/09
More than two million people in California alone have medical debt - and two thirds of them ran up the debt while they were insured, according to a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
The study provides more evidence of the need for health insurance reform, and it refutes those who say the current system is working well.
"That even insured people are forced to take on medical debt to pay for their health care is another glaring inadequacy in our current system of health insurance," said E. Richard Brown, center director and lead author of the report. "Current policies either do not offer enough coverage or offer full-coverage at a cost that is too expensive for many people to bear.
"The result is that too many people have health insurance plans that leave them financially vulnerable and force them to delay the care they need."
The center does a survey of Californians every other year - the largest state survey of health care consumers - to prepare the report. The new report is based on data from a survey in 2007, when the economy was still going strong, so the situation is probably even worse now.
The survey found 2.2 million people with medical debt, 13 percent of the non-elderly adult population. Of those, 800,000 had medical debt of more than $2,000.
Nearly a third of those with debt reported delaying or skipping needed care, double the percentage of those without debt. And of those with more than $8,000 in debt, 43 percent reported delays in care. In other words, the current system is producing rationing of care.
While limited to California, the study is consistent with national research showing medical debt contributes to about more than half of bankruptcies and foreclosures.
"Heath coverage is supposed to protect Americans from the financial burden of health care costs," said Dr. Robert K. Ross, CEO and president of The California Endowment, a foundation which helped pay for the study. "Americans should be outraged that the very system that they depend on for health care no longer offers that protection."
– 09/04/09
Last summer, Health Care Voices told you about a New York Times article about people getting married so they could get health care coverage. Our headline: "I fell for his blue eyes - and his Blue Cross."
Now comes another treatment of the issue, not as serious as the New York Times. Check out this video from the humor Web site Runaway Box. (I know, we're usually more like to direct to the Web sites of the Kaiser Family Foundation or Congressional Budget Office, but we've got to have a little variety, right?)
– 05/07/09
The story's getting old: Lose your job, lose your health insurance. We reported recently on a study from University of California at Berkeley - one of the co-authors is a members of CWA Local 9119 - estimating that 3.7 million people have lost health coverage since November, 2007.
That's 3.7 million scared people. This week, the New York Times reported on a Texas family that includes three of those people, the Walker family of Humble, Tex., near Houston. Danna Walker, 47, lost her job at DHL, the package delivery company. Her first concern was for her son, Jake, who has testicular cancer.
Jake's cancer is in remission, but he his condition needs to be monitored with CT scans and other expensive tests - thousands of dollars worth - every few months. Of course, Jake can't buy an individual insurance policy, because insurers won't sell him a policy that would cover his pre-existing condition.
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, a world-class hospital, says it will have to bill the family for Jake's future treatment. Desperate, the family bought a student health policy for Jake. "With a week to spare," the Times reported, "they scraped together $335 to pay the quarterly premium by delaying a house payment and pleading with the power company for a 10-day extension."
Another view of the human impact of the recession on health care comes this week from the Washington Post. It tells the story of an overwhelmed health clinic called HealthServe in North Carolina, one of the states hardest hit by the recession.
"Just six months ago, the clinic delivered same-day care to most callers, the gold standard from a health perspective," the Post said." But in October the delays crept to four days, then 19 in November and 25 in December. In January, HealthServe temporarily stopped accepting new patients, and almost immediately 380 people put their names on a waiting list for when the crunch eases."
The problems of the health system and the problems of the economy are clearly connected. That's why CWA believes we can't wait until after the recession to fix health care. Fixing health care is part of fixing the economy.
– 04/23/09
Jennifer Thompson, a California realtor, signed up for health insurance, and got a letter saying, "The immediate value of your coverage is peace of mind." Then she got cancer. Three days after she left the hospital, her insurance was "rescinded" -- leaving her with $160,000 in medical bills.
Matt Johnson, 23, of Minnesota, was doing well in college, but had to put his career dreams on hold and take a job in a home improvement store. That job offered him health coverage that would pay for his colitis -- including medicines that run $1,000 a month.
Their stories -- and lots more -- are told in a new documentary from PBS’s Frontline, called "Sick Around America." It’s a compelling hour that leaves you with the belief that our leaky health system is in need of serious repairs.
Click on the link and you can watch the whole hour-long show online. The show’s Web site also includes interviews with experts and advice for consumers
– 04/21/09
The recession has pushed an additional 3.7 million Americans into the ranks of the uninsured, according to estimates in a report by Ken Jacobs and Dave Graham-Squire, professors at the University of California at Berkeley. Graham-Squire is a member of CWA Local 9119 and vice-president of the local's chapter at Berkeley.
That increase came in less than a year and a half, from November 2007 to February 2009 - and the authors say their numbers may be too conservative.
"This recession has a bigger rate of underemployed than we have seen in previous recessions, meaning people are involuntarily working part time which can also lead to insurance loss," Jacobs told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's possible the situation is far worse."
And, even when the economy recovers and the jobs come back, the health insurance won't, the authors predict. If there's no health reform, and if premiums continue to rise at the current rate, there will be 4.2 million more uninsured in 2012 than there were in 2007, before the economy began its decline, they estimate.
"As the national debate about possible health-care reform approaches, an emphasis is already being placed on the economic cost of enacting health-care reform during a time of economic crisis," the report says. "This policy brief looks at another angle of the health-care reform debate--the impact on health coverage of not acting."
As more people lose coverage, the report says, costs will increase for employers and individuals who do buy insurance. The cost of treating the uninsured adds from 5 to 10 percent to health premiums, the report says.
– 04/15/09
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