High Price Pressure
Steadily rising insurance rates cause health care crisis
continued from previous page
HMOs drop coverage
When Hula Parker retired from her job as a hospital technician after 32 years, her health insurance co-pay premium was $9 a month. Now it's $110, about 12 times what she paid 10 years ago.
“That's a lot,” said the 76-year-old Detroiter who gets by on a modest pension and Social Security. “I'm on a fixed income, and I just can't afford these high costs.”
Parker knows she's fortunate to have health care, even though it's a stretch each month. She also knows how important her supplemental Blue Cross insurance with prescription drug coverage is when she buys her medications for a chronic bad back and high blood pressure.
“I'm not a sickly person, so I'm lucky,” said Parker, “but they keep trying to push me into an HMO. I don't want it.”
Tens of millions of Americans aren't so lucky. Just since 1998, HMOs have dropped 2.4 million beneficiaries from the Medicare+Choice program. The latest wave of withdrawals will affect about 200,000 seniors, including 20,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield subscribers in Florida and 16,000 Aetna subscribers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but they still have Medicare coverage.
According to the National Coalition on Health Care, about 45 million Americans will have no health insurance by the end of this year.
That's one reason health care, particularly prescription drug coverage, is one of the most important issues facing Congress this year. And, although it's not on the national agenda now, there is a growing and increasingly organized movement calling for a national health care system.
The UAW and its progressive allies have long advocated a single-payer system that provides universal coverage for all Americans.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger addressed the issue at the union's recent Special Bargaining Convention, saying, “As a union, we simply cannot give up the fight for affordable health care for all.”
A recent Harvard Medical School study found that the costs of the tax-financed share of health spending in the United States totaled nearly 60 percent. And our tax-financed costs exceed the total costs of any other nation except Switzerland.
Put simply, researchers found the United States already spends more per capita from tax dollars than other countries, but has less to show for it. Their conclusion? National health insurance would require smaller tax increases than most people imagine.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-author of the study, is a primary care physician at Cambridge Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“We pay the world's highest health care taxes, but much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks, and HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at taxpayers' expense,” she said. “But politicians claim we can't afford universal coverage.
“Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don't get it.”
Dr. David Himmelstein, co-author of the Harvard study and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, said his research shows that universal coverage is affordable.
“National health insurance doesn't mean spending more; it means spending wisely. By slashing bureaucracy and drug prices, we could save enough to cover all of the uninsured and improve coverage for the rest of us,” he said.
Senate rejects Rx plan
The Senate's recent failure to pass a prescription drug benefit for the nation's 40 million seniors on Medicare didn't help matters.
Democrats proposed a good bill, but the Senate GOP killed it. Meanwhile, the House approved a sham GOP bill that wouldn't provide any relief.
It's unlikely the drug debate will be resolved anytime soon. But it's sure to influence seniors in the November elections, which typically attract large numbers of older voters.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who heads the U.S. Senate Prescription Drug Task Force, has worked tirelessly to help people like the Kazmierczaks and Hula Parker.
“The seniors of this country have been let down,” Stabenow said. “We are not going to give this up.”
