The County’s Indigents and Health-Care Costs

Your excellent editorials “Rich and Poor Alike Deserve Health Care” (Aug. 6), and “A Penny-Wise Legacy” (Aug. 8), are the latest of many recent articles and editorials on the health-care crisis in California and Orange County. The Aug. 6 editorial ends on the note that recent reports “provide disturbing documentation that when it comes to the health of the less affluent, there is far too little curing--or caring.”

I don’t think the last point is true. Poll after poll reports that over 80% of Americans and Californians believe everyone should have access to basic health care regardless of ability to pay. The same view was expressed by over 80% of about 7,000 Orange County residents in public discussions sponsored by California Health Decisions, a nonprofit organization concerned with the ethics and economics of health-care issues.

The problem is persuading our governor, state legislators and county supervisors to give the funding of health-care needs the high priority it deserves.

The “obstetrical-diversion” policy at UCI Medical Center has been highly publicized. An equally severe and worsening problem is the shortage of prenatal care facilities for low-income and indigent women.

In the first six months of 1988, in Orange County clinics, 766 pregnant women eligible for care were “referred elsewhere” because clinic capacity was not available. Whether they received services elsewhere is unknown.

In the first six months of 1989, 1,287, more than half of those eligible, were referred elsewhere. The 68% increase in the number of women turned away comes at a time when “infant mortality can be linked to a variety of factors (and) lack of prenatal care was the most common,” according to doctors at a medical symposium in Orange.

If Gov. Deukmejian cuts two-thirds of state funding for family planning, more pregnancies will occur and the need for prenatal care will increase.

Skimping on prenatal care costs taxpayers a lot. For every dollar spent on prenatal care, two to three dollars are saved on health problems of low birth-weight babies or babies born with birth defects.

When the 1989-90 Orange County budget was approved on Aug. 1, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder proposed developing a prenatal health task force, which would focus continuing attention on the problem.

However, Orange County must go a step further and provide funding for prenatal care to 1,500 additional women who will otherwise not have access to needed services in the coming year. With county funding, the services can be provided by community clinics throughout the county.

Orange County residents need to let the supervisors know they do indeed care, and urge them to provide the necessary funding for adequate prenatal care.

LOUIS GARGIN, Chairman

California Health Decisions Task Force

Orange