Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of OpportunityRating: 5 The Death Spiral Of Persons Who Lack Health Insurance
40,000,000 - 50,000,000 Americans have no health insurance and another group of Americans of equal size are underinsured. Americans have to choose between food and medicine. Americans live in a land of opportunity until they have a challenge to their health. If you have a challenge to your health and if you do not have the best private health insurance you will enter a death spiral as the change in your health will drain away your money and your hope. It is a sad day - only in America, the land of no national health insurance. | Rating: 4 The rise of a 'caste system' in the US
The authors strongly couch their presentation as attesting to the rise of a caste system in the United States. Where the caste consists of the chronically ill, infirm and marginally employed. Several members of this group are interviewed. In the MidWest, Mississipi and other regions.
A common symptom is a death spiral, whereby working class individuals, who might indeed have worked very hard, but then suffered injuries, fall into a feedback loop. Where they can barely afford health case. Except for emergency room admissions. A cruel paradox.
The book goes into how the stress of poverty and being ill can feed into and reinforce each other.
Another ironic aspect shown is how caregivers can often lack health insurance. A bitter scenario that is all too common. | Rating: 3 Uninsurance is a real problem
Lack of insurance is a verifiable problem, and one can obtain more information from the Institute of Medicine which published 6 reports. I'd recommend starting with the last: Insuring America's Health-Principles and Recommendations and an article by Leslie Weatherly from HR Magazine: 'The rising cost of health care: strategic and societal considerations for employers.'
The uninsured is a fliud group: 80 million lacked insurance for one month out of 24; 23 million lacked insurance for the entire 2 years. (I'm a physician who went without health insurance for 4 years.) 45 million is the average number of uninsured each month. The majority of uninsured are non-Hispanic whites, and most are from families in which one person works. Blacks are twice as likely to be uninsured; Hispanics-three times. Foreigners' rate of uninsurance declines with increasing time here.
Small business owners often can't afford to provide insurance. Individuals either find the premiums prohibitive or they can't buy insurance at any price. Medicaid does not cover single adults and childless couples. Families lose coverage when the member providing insurance loses employment, dies or through divorce. COBRA can be costly (the premiums for my wife and I went from $750/month to $937 before we regained employer-based coverage). A recent study found half of bankruptcies were because of medical expenses, even among people with insurance.
Sadly, sad stories of peoples' suffering isn't likely to convince policy makers bought by special interest groups.The traditional Republican belief is 'I got mine; it's your fault if you don't have yours.' Medicaid has been framed as being wasted on 'crack-whores having babies' when in reality the majority is spent on the elderly and disabled.
Change will come only when the pain is great enough to produce a mass-movement demanding a solution, and those spearheading the drive have more political savvy than their opponents. |
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