Health Care Demands Caring

Most people think Orange County is rich, a land of plenty. So it would seem to follow that few residents would really be in dire need of anything, especially anything so basic as food, shelter and medical care. Wrong.

That mistaken view was shattered several years ago when residents learned that about 320,000 people go to bed each night hungry because they don’t get enough to eat. And several thousand others each night have no bed or home to go to.

Instead of standing out even more in the midst of all the abundance of one of the richest areas in the country, however, the plight of the county’s needy residents seems to sink out of sight. But scratch the surface and it’s there, as a special Health Care Task Force has discovered.

The task force, which conducted a one-year study of health care in the community for the United Way of Orange County, reported last Thursday that about 360,000 people, 16% of the total county population, do not receive adequate health care; that the county does, indeed, have a “health care crisis,” and that medical and health services are “deteriorating rapidly.”

And it’s not just a problem that hits the poor and the elderly. The task force reported that “hundreds of thousands of residents,” even though insured, still do not receive the health care they need. And that many middle-income residents do not even have health insurance.

The real depth of the problem is hard to measure because there are no solid numbers on how many people don’t bother to seek medical care because they can’t afford it, or seek it and are turned away. But the task force is satisfied that the problem reaches deep into the community, as does the decline of government support and compassion on the federal, state and local levels for the elderly and the indigent.

One sad example of local indifference is the task force’s estimate that Orange County is losing nearly $46 million in state funds that it should rightfully be receiving for health care simply because it has not been pursuing state assistance. That’s inexcusable when people’s well-being and very lives are at stake. In the long run, everyone in the community suffers from, and pays for, such neglect.

The task force didn’t seek solutions in its study. It only set out to try to determine the extent of the health problem that reduces some people to poverty and others to suffer financially and physically without any care at all.

The 28-member task force (composed of health care specialists and heads of social service agencies) did its job well. The problem has been more clearly defined. And the United Way, to its credit, has decided to keep the group together so it can now search for some of those ways to make more health care more available.

The study’s findings do emphasize the urgent need for broader federal and state programs. And for much more coordination on the local level. It also focuses on the one vital ingredient necessary before other needed changes can come about--sufficient concern from the community and its public officials for their responsibility to provide adequate medical attention.

Until that kind of care is forthcoming, hundreds of thousands of Orange County residents will continue to miss the quantity and quality of health care they deserve.