An Urgent Call for National Health Care Rights!

In today’s online edition of the New York Times, writer Cara Buckley examines the plight of uninsured young adults falling into the chasm between college and salaried positions with health insurance.
A particularly striking story is that of a young receptionist who was billed almost $18,000 for less than 48 hours in the hospital. US Census stats from 1999 – the most recent available – report that per capita income was less than $22,000. In 2004, the median household income was less than $45,000. Aside from the upper one or two percent of our wealthiest citizens, what person could hope to ever pay that bill – nearly a year’s income – without declaring bankruptcy?
This is just the latest in a sea of articles focusing on the near impossibility of securing health insurance and access to medical care in the US today. The oft-quoted ball-park figure of 46 million uninsured – a whopping 18 % of the population- is only growing with the recent rounds of lay-offs. Losing one’s job is the death knoll for access to health care, as the National Coalition for Health Care reports that only approximately 7% of the population can afford to pay COBRA fees – regularly topping $700 per month. (For international readers: federal law mandates that former employees be granted temporary access to their former employer’s health insurance program as a sort of bridge-coverage until they find their next place of employment. This program is known by its acronym COBRA).
The situation is even worse than those statistics indicate. NCHC further reports that the “number of uninsured rose 2.2 million between 2005 and 2006 and has increased by almost 8 million people since 2000” and that “nearly 90 million people – about one-third of the population below the age of 65- spent a portion of either 2006 or 2007 without health coverage”.
Even those who manage to hang on to their jobs in this recession find little comfort – for an estimated 37 million of those 46 million uninsured are working and either have the misfortune of working for the 1/3 of firms that do not have employer-offered health benefits or simply cannot afford the premiums – which increased over 120% between 2000 and 2006.
Increasingly, even upper-middle class families cannot afford these payments – NCHC states that 40% of the uninsured live in households making over $50,000.
The solution for many is to avoid going to the hospital or the doctor until it is an emergency, when by federal law they cannot be turned away for lack of funds. NCHC reports that “about 20 percent of the uninsured (vs. three percent of those with coverage) say their usual source of care is the emergency room.” This is hardly a solution- by the time a patient arrives in the hospital, the once low-level ailment is now much more expensive to treat (in addition to the obvious fact that the patient’s life may have been endangered in the interim).
Several young adults interviewed by Buckley also reported using their friends’ expired medication to treat ailments such as the flu – a trend medical experts believe only adds to the already growing crisis of antibiotic-resistant infections. Since diseases are blind to our income and health insurance lines, the desperate struggle of an increasing percentage of our population to make medical ends meet could very well bring about a health crisis for us all in the form of virulent strains of TB, MRSA (Staph) and pneumonia. Without antibiotic treatment, we could catapult our entire society back to the medical dark ages.
Universal health insurance as a basic right and service is long overdue. Historically treated like a commodity, its prices have soared far beyond any standard of reasonableness or comprehension, and far beyond the capacity of any ordinary citizen to pay. Tying health benefits to employment is outdated and illogical – for an individual’s need to see a doctor (or the risk they pose to public health) is in no way related to their current job title. (By the current rational, it would seem that we believe only wealthy, salaried citizens ever get sick).
Disturbingly, many Americans cling to a paranoid fear of government controlled health care – as if this is just a precursor to a Communist incursion. And yet, we are willing to turn over our personal records and the ultimate power to approve or deny a necessary service to private companies that exist for the express purpose of making a profit. In a government-run system, everyone is guaranteed the same basic rights – and since we operate under a democracy, we would have the right to make demands about the way the system would function – and we would all be in the same boat. As it is now, we are atomized and forced to fight our own individual health insurance battles on our own because there is no common ground – everyone is subject to their own employer’s revolving array of health care options.
For those who fear the long lines oft-reported here about the British system, take heart: even in that country, individuals have the right to purchase expensive health insurance and skip the lines. If you want to continue paying upwards of $400 a month, you’d still be entitled to do that. The rest of us, instead of being medically disenfranchised, would just earn our human right to see a doctor.
When we currently spend more than any industrialized nation on health care with such depressing results, it’s time for more than a change. It’s time for a health care revolution.
(More stats can be found here.)