Platform : Living On Medical Thin Ice: ‘I Can’t Get Insurance’

WALLACE ALBERTSON

Trustee emeritus, L.A. Community

College District

We need a national health care plan and if Congress weren’t full of such chicken-hearted gutless wonders, they’d have passed one long ago.

I have three health coverage programs and am generally in good health, yet I still pay at least several hundred dollars per year for health care. Poor people can’t do that, and the real tragedy is people earning at the lower end of middle-class income who don’t qualify for government programs but can’t afford private insurance, either.

First, I’m covered by Medicare but it usually only pays 80% and many things aren’t covered. Second, I have a backup policy with Blue Cross, paid through PERS (the Public Employees Retirement System of California). Third, I have supplemental catastrophic insurance through UCLA’s alumni association.

My husband was the actor Jack Albertson, and for two years after he died I had health coverage under his professional union’s short-term coverage of the surviving spouse. Then I had to get coverage on my own.

Many widows are left without health coverage because they aren’t old enough to draw Medicare but haven’t worked in years, are near retirement age and may have health problems that make it difficult to get private insurance.

LAURA MITCHELL

Member, steering committee of Health Access of California and government issues coordinator for the Multiple Sclerosis California Action Network.

My husband was laid off in May, 1992, and we’re on COBRA, which extends our health care coverage for 18 months. We pay premiums of $400 per month for it. I have multiple sclerosis, which makes me uninsurable on my own. I got on the waiting list for California’s Major Risk Medical Insurance Program, which has a waiting list of more than a year. It can only cover about 11,000 people per year and you pay your own premiums--$218 per month for me or $529 per month if my husband and son are included.

I worry that if my multiple sclerosis gets worse I won’t be able to get certain kinds of medical equipment I need in order to keep living productively.

If I get worse and can’t get the health care I need I may have to stop working. Then California won’t get taxes on what I earn or buy. I could even eventually end up on a public program. And I’m certainly not the only one in this situation.

ALLAN TURNER

Chris Brownlie Hospice, Elysian Park

Nine years ago, I was diagnosed HIV positive. I was selling real estate in Houston, doing well and had private health insurance. But by 1985 I couldn’t even afford that. I had quit work and been through a bad period when both my mom and dad died. I had begun feeling sick, with night sweats and Aids Related Complex. In 1986, I began preparing to move to California, where there are more social services.

For about three months I got California medical benefits. But my Social Security check each month put me just $17 over the income limit so I lost those benefits. Things went really bad for awhile. I lived for a year in my car. Then I got pneumonia. Someone helped me get into the Hollywood annex of the Chris Brownlie Hospice (last) March. The hospice bills Medicare directly and it covers all the costs.

I’ve gotten wonderful care, my friends and the nurses have been great and I’ve been happy here.

(Allan Turner was interviewed in early December, 1992. He died shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve.)