The Symptoms of a Sick Society
In case you’ve missed it, our promise of nation-building hasn’t been going well, at least as regards to our own. Here are a few timely dispatches from experts on the front lines:
Among large companies, 22% say they are about to eliminate health-care coverage for employees who are nearing retirement. An additional 13% already have.
About 44% of these companies have raised the health-care premiums paid by retirees, and 36% now demand that retirees pay a greater share for medical treatment. The average increased cost for new retirees last year was 20%.
Looking ahead, 82% of large companies say more premium increases and benefit caps are coming in the next three years.
Kaiser Family Foundation / Hewitt Associates conducted this survey. They aren’t alone in the findings. We can add testaments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation / Families USA, the American Assn. of Health Plans, the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Susan Fleischman, medical director of the Venice Family Clinic and president-elect of the California Primary Care Assn., among others.
Asked to rank their worries, Americans in 2003 put the affordability of health care ahead of terrorism, crime, job security and the loss of their savings in the stock market.
No U.S. law stands in the way of companies eliminating or reducing health-care coverage at will -- and never mind any promises made to employees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes enactment of such a law.
About 75 million Americans under the age of 65 went without health-care coverage for some portion of the last two years. That’s nearly every third person in the country, 20 million of them children.
California was the shame of states, with 36% of its under-65 residents uninsured for part of those two years. Total: 11.1 million people.
Of these uninsured, 80% come from working families, 17% were age 10 or younger, 30% earned $50,000 or more.
More than half of Hispanics and 39% of African Americans lacked insurance for at least part of the last two years.
Every 90 minutes, another 465 people in the U.S. will lose their health-care coverage because of rising costs, a stagnant economy and corporate profit goals.
So far in George W. Bush’s presidency, 1.4 million more Americans have become uninsured.
During times when they lacked insurance, more than 40% of people postponed visits to the doctor.
Compared with children in families with insurance, those without are 70% more likely to suffer ear infections, strep throat and other miseries without medical attention.
Case study: An L.A. neighborhood family clinic reported providing emergency treatment to a preschool girl after her uninsured mother administered lye to kill germs that caused a throat infection.
Uninsured children are 30% less likely to receive care for injuries.
One of every five parents without insurance has kept a child from participating in organized sports for fear of injury.
An unknown number of children are barred from school and community athletic programs because they are unable to get medical physicals.
Mortality rates for diabetes and cervical cancer are double for women without health insurance or ready access to subsidized or charitable care. Prostate cancer in men is a similar killer among the uninsured.
Case study: A physician at a Los Angeles free clinic reported diagnosing cervical cancer in an uninsured patient and sending her to a county hospital for a hysterectomy. The wait for such a lifesaving procedure was two months.
Emergency rooms are the only medical care available to millions of Americans. Waits at urban county hospital emergency rooms routinely extend to eight or nine hours, longer on weekends. In Los Angeles, uninsured patients with symptoms of heart disease must wait 12 days for a diagnostic EKG.
Case study: For lack of treatment for diabetes, a 40-year-old uninsured man in Southern California went blind and his leg was amputated. Not only was his suffering far greater, so was the ultimate cost to society as a result of emergency surgery and long-term care.
The costs of treating the uninsured and below-cost Medicare reimbursements are a significant cause of the soaring premiums for those who have insurance. Small companies, those that are least likely to offer insurance to workers, were hit with premium increases of 14.5% last year, compared with 10% for large corporations.
Americans do not save money with this system. Per capita health-care costs in the U.S. are greater than in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Britain -- nations that offer universal or near-universal coverage for their citizens. Meanwhile, the U.S. trails all except Denmark in life expectancy.
Some challenges, it seems, really are too big for us to confront. So we now return you to the crisis in Iraq.
