Over the past several months, the face of health care reform has increasingly belonged to pundits, lobbyists, and members of Congress. After the Senate Finance committee's approval of health care reform legislation yesterday, the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal featured prominent pictures of committee members Senators Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe. As the debate now enters its next contentious phase, we need to focus on the faces that are desperate for help: the 46 million uninsured Americans.
Who exactly are these uninsured people we keep hearing about? They're not what many people expect. The vast majority of the uninsured -- 81 percent -- come from working families with low incomes. Median net worth (assets minus debts) of the uninsured is zero, so there's no safety net to pay for unexpected medical costs. Because Medicare insures all but 600,000 of the elderly, most of the uninsured (45.7 million) are under age 65. The Kaiser Family Foundation has provided us with some insight with "The Uninsured: A Primer."
In today's episode of the Dr. Oz Show, Dr. Mehmet Oz puts a face on the uninsured. He traveled to Houston and, with the help of 700 volunteers and the National Association of Free Clinics, staged a free clinic that saw nearly 2,000 uninsured patients in a single day. People who had felt invisible were blown away to suddenly find themselves the focus of a well-organized health care initiative.
Founded in 1999, the National Association of Free Clinics is a wonderful resource that was a complete surprise to me. Nicole D. Lamoureux, its national director, told me NAFC is a member organization for the nation's 1,200 free health clinics, which come in all shapes and sizes and use different models and have a variety of funding streams. At their foundation are an astounding six million volunteers, including doctors, nurses, and administrative staff.
Free clinics saw four million patients in 2008 and are on track to see eight million this year -- even though funding and donations are down 20 percent. With little to no state or federal funding, they are financed by foundations, grants and donations. With the economic downturn, some retired volunteers have had to return to paid work, leaving clinics understaffed. There are no provisions in the health care reform bill regarding free clinics and they received no money from the stimulus package. Eighty-three percent of patients going to free clinics come from working households. Forty-four percent of free clinics operate on a budget of less than $100,000.
As I watched the taping of the Dr. Oz Show, some of the stories absolutely took my breath away: a middle-aged man who helplessly watched a tiny lip blister mushroom into a large malignant tumor; a woman who lost a breast to cancer and wants to feel whole again; a 14-month old infant with a hole in her heart and desperate parents with no insurance. One of the patients was a man with rectal bleeding who had a six-figure income until he lost his job and insurance last December. Unable to afford medical care, he put off any evaluation until Dr. Oz flew him to New York so I could perform a consultation and colonoscopy. His story is the focus of this week's CBS Doc Dot Com. See what happened below:
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He's just another cog in the wobbly wheel of modern medicine. Allopathic medicine is a total failure with regard to treatment of disease. Alm;ost every approach or treatment is wrong. Doctors totally ignore the healing properties of food and nutrition, while precribing dangerous, ineffective drugs. It's so bizarre.
So I have none, and am sitting at my desk on my break, with a sore throat and a fever, probably making other folks here sick, but she doesn't pay us if we stay home, so........
financial ruin. What shape would you be in if you didn't have anything but unemployment insurance
for a couple of months? would you be able to afford your rent or mortgage , food, other bills, insurance payments ( cobra payments are as much as rent in many cases) plus copays?
be honest, you probably would be in terrible shape like these people.
A few weeks ago I listened to a local NPR program debating health care reform. A caller who said he works in the insurance industry revealed that there is an agency known as MIB and described that anyone who has ever had insurance has a "file" there, and insurance companies access that information. The host of the NPR show was stunned at this revelation, and so was I. I looked it up and found the following:
"The Medical Information Bureau (MIB), a Delaware corporation, is the world’s largest insurance reporting agency and represents approximately 750 member insurance companies. “The Medical Information Bureau (a/k/a, MIB Group, Inc., a/k/a, MIB, Inc., a/k/a, MIB Solutions, Inc.) collects and furnishes information on consumers to all Medical Information Bureau (MIB) member corporations for use in the insurance underwriting process. In addition to an individual’s credit history, data collected by the Medical Information Bureau (MIB) may include medical conditions, driving records, criminal activity, drug use, participation in hazardous sports, and personal or family genetic history, among other facts."
We have no implied rights to privacy when it comes big business.
.That way the politicians can get a close up look at who they are sentencing to death and disability and the news media will be unable to avoid covering it.
Even if we could get insurance, which we can't because we are both over 50, we couldn't afford it.
We have both worked hard all of our lives and I'm embarrassed to be in this position. I'm also angry, especially when I get e-mails from my cousin who is married to a plastic surgeon about how healthcare for all is a socialist plot.. She is revealing the ugly, selfish and greedy side of those who do not want insurance for all. I am sick of all of them.
I would suggest that if you insist on the plan you have and are truly looking out for the people then find an alternate source of revenue.. Do something like legalize marijuana and tax the crap out of it, or lift the ban on offshore drilling and capitalize on the profits.. Maybe start building casinos in the states that allow gambling.. The oil alone would pay for healthcare for EVERY person in America.. PLEASE STOP RAISING TAXES!!
and volunteers for the free health clinics, the face of those
who are un-insured are the same as the people you live
and work around. And despite what FOX news says, there are
a lot more than 20,000 un-insured people. I would like to pay
each month for health insurance, just like I do my car insurance,
a lower rate and a little higher co-pay. But, if it takes 7-10 years
to get any insurance going, it will probabaly not matter.
Those here illegally deserve nothing, and that includes insurance coverage. Te only thing they deserve is deportation.
The best way to deal with the medical needs of millions of trespassers is to send them home. They have their medical problems and get treated in their own home countries. Get it? Too complicated?
I made no comment on the other people. It was not the intent of my letter. I commented only on those who are not supposed to be here. How do you know what my position is on our uninsured citizens?
Your letter was typically liberal-accusatory without cause. You think i'm hateful for thinking our laws should be obeyed so we can take better care of our own people-like you.
Calm down and start thinking.
The right to accessing/receiving adequate medical care may be debatable.
The threat to your health from undiagnosed and untreated disease is not.
Illegals using energency rooms for routine health care and all the costs of children being being born to illegals (including, caesareans and complications) has caused the closure of countless hospitals in this country. This makes it harder and more expensive for legal residents to get care. All of this is acceptable to you?
Come down off your high horse. You liberals are not superior people, just self-righteous people. Let's have less attitude and more rational argument.
Many more people who are "insured" actually have junk insurance with unacceptably high premiums and deductibles... and if they get a serious illness are either 1) fired (because their company doesn't want to be saddled with a "fine" from the insurance company for the temerity of having an actual ill person on their payroll, or 2) dropped by the insurance company because of a made-up "pre-existing" illness.
The sick person has to fight either their employer or the insurance company at a time when they are most vulnerable and weak, eg with a new cancer diagnosis, etc.
This in my opinion is the BIG UNTOLD story about criminal practices on the part of "insurance" companies (read "we'll take your money when your helathy, but we will bail on you when you get sick").
I heard the same stores over and over and over... people who'd paid into insurance for YEARS, then terminated when they got sick.
To me this is domestic terrorism of the worst kind. People go bankrupt, lose their homes etc..... AND THESE PEOPLE HAD INSURANCE!!
They thought.
Corporate shill blue-dogs and Republicans are complicit in perpetuating the domestic terrorism of the American people.
Why won't the Dems support tort reform? Why can't people buy insurance across state lines? If these two things were addressed (they would probably save consumers a lot of money) more people and politicians might support the proposed (though incomplete) bill.
The people who like their insurance probably haven't had to rely on it yet.
That must be the 83% who haven't got sick yet.
Seriously, this whole debate is about health care insurance, not health care. There's a difference. You may like your doctor (health care) but still think your plan is no good.
The same poll you cited (Gallup 2007) found that only 70% were satisfied with their health plan coverage. That would be 70% of the insured, not 70% of all Americans. So add the 30% dissatisfied insured to all those who are not insured at all, and you have 50% of all Americans who feel they are poorly served by the present system.