Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Editorial: Health care for all Americans
In the years since Hillarycare was hooted down, Washington has not come up with a good, rational health care system. Voters must demand one.
From the RoundTable blog
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Americans can't afford to go through another national election cycle without extracting from candidates the promise of universal access to health care -- before people are at death's door.
An advocacy group for affordable health care estimated last week that 10 Virginians between 24 and 64 years of age die every week for lack of health insurance. And people with employer-provided coverage aren't doing so well, either.
A Washington Post story Monday reported that rising health care costs continue to eat into wages, hitting the working class especially hard. With premiums rising, many lower-wage workers can't afford to buy into employer-provided coverage when it's offered, swelling the numbers of uninsured.
Families USA based its estimate of premature deaths among Virginia's uninsured in part on a National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine finding that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than those with private health insurance. People between 55 and 64 years old are at even greater risk; the study ranked lack of insurance as the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer, for people in the 10 years before Medicare eligibility kicks in.
President Bush blithely asserted last year that "people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
But Families USA found straightforward reasons why the lack of insurance puts people at risk. The uninsured are more than three times as likely as insured adults to delay seeking medical care. The uninsured are about 30 percent less likely to have had a checkup in the past year and they are more likely to be diagnosed with a disease in an advanced stage.
They're not avoiding the ER because they're stupid or careless or afraid. They can't afford to go. Without the discounts that insurance companies negotiate with hospitals and doctors, people without insurance often are charged 2½ times what an insured patient would be charged, and they're presented with the full bill. Hospitals write off some debts, but about 60 percent of uninsured adults report having problems with medical bills.
Employers, too, are struggling with rising health care costs, which is why employee benefits now eat up more than 30 percent of compensation, leaving wages stagnant. Yet nearly half of workers earning $15 an hour or less who have access to job-related insurance don't sign up; many can't afford their share -- about a third of the premium.
Tweaks, nudges and faith in markets are not going to deliver good health care for all.
