Unlikely Coalition Declares Health-Care Crisis

Business and labor leaders, the insurance industry, health-care providers and consumer advocates--at odds on almost every issue--sat on the same side of a table Tuesday to declare that the country is in a health-care crisis and proclaim their commitment to health coverage for all Americans.

Their strange-bedfellows coalition highlighted the growing consensus in Washington that in a time of recession and spiraling health-care costs, something must be done to help Americans--more than 39 million and growing as of 2000--who have no health insurance.

Indeed, the coalition released data showing that an additional 2.2 million Americans lost health coverage last year because of layoffs. That represents the largest one-year increase in the number of uninsured Americans since 1992, said Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Families USA.

Research shows that 80% of the uninsured are in working families whose employers do not provide health coverage. They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid or other public health-care programs but too little to afford to pay health insurance premiums.

The partnership--Covering the Uninsured--announced its launch of a Web site and a $10-million advertising campaign funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The print ads and television commercials focus on various health-care problems and outcomes, noting that “when you’re uninsured, life turns out differently.”

The campaign’s Web site address is https://www.coveringtheuninsured.org

Drawing further attention to the issue, a national association of 100 academic health-care centers Tuesday launched a $250,000 educational campaign--more than one-tenth of its annual budget--to generate action on what it called the “national disgrace” of the uninsured.

Teaching hospitals have only 6% of the nation’s hospital beds but provide 50% of all uncompensated medical care, said Dr. David J. Ramsay, president of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Coming in an election year, the two high-profile campaigns by influential mainstream groups could further pressure Congress and President Bush to act on health-care issues. Bush has proposed a range of initiatives, including $89 billion in tax credits over 10 years to help the uninsured buy their own health-care coverage.

More than 6.3 million Californians, almost one in five state residents, have no health insurance. California ranks fifth among the states in the proportion of its population that is uninsured, according to Census Bureau and other data compiled by the Assn. of Academic Health Care Centers.

New Mexico ranks first, with almost one-quarter of its population uninsured. Texas, with 22% of its population uninsured, ranks second. Dr. Arthur Kellermann, professor and chairman of emergency medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, illustrated what he called the “tragedy and sheer absurdity of the current situation.” He recalled an uninsured mother in her early 40s who could not afford her blood pressure medication and later died of a massive stroke.

“The money that we spent in a few short minutes in a futile effort to save her life would have paid for her medication for years and years,” he said.

“The hard truth,” Dr. Yank D. Coble, president-elect of the American Medical Assn., told the foundation coalition, “is that Americans without health-care coverage live sicker and die younger.”

“It’s bad fiscal policy. It’s bad public policy. And it’s bad medicine,” Coble said. Leaders of the coalition’s 12 often adversarial partners--including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Health Insurance Assn. of America, the American Hospital Assn. and AARP--acknowledged that they disagree on what the government should do to help the uninsured gain access to health care. And none of them expects a quick or easy political solution.

Other organizations participating in the Covering the Uninsured campaign are the AFL-CIO, American Nurses Assn., the Business Roundtable, the Catholic Health Assn. of the United States, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Service Employees International Union.