Michigan needs health care access for all:
Since a national universal system is not a reality, Michiganians must create local solutions to provide medical care for the uninsured and underinsured
Detroit News
detnews.com
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
By Irvin D. Reid
If you asked most Americans whether health care is a basic right, we emphatically would say yes. Unfortunately, this conviction has not translated itself into public policy. Citizens of this country are guaranteed many rights, but access to high-quality health care sadly is not among them.
While in most respects, this nation’s health care system is among the world’s best, millions of our citizens remain underserved — or not served at all. If you do not have money, however, the door to our health system may well be closed to you.
More than 43 million Americans are without health insurance, and this number is growing. All over this country, people who work hard every day often must choose between paying rent and buying food or obtaining health care for themselves or their families.
It is important to remember that most people who have no health insurance do have jobs. They are members of working-class families whose employers offer no health benefits, or whose expenses are such that health care must be a low priority. The inability of working men and women to obtain affordable health insurance is a consuming problem that is spreading beyond traditional minority populations.
While the lack of affordable health care is a statewide problem, it is a crisis in Detroit.
Twenty-two percent of Detroit’s residents are uninsured compared with 11 percent statewide. It gets worse if you add people who are eligible for Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor. Then 52 percent of Detroit’s residents lack coverage or need government help compared with 22.5 percent statewide.
Only 35 percent of Detroit’s residents have commercial insurance; statewide, the figure is 63 percent.
Given recent trends in employer benefit givebacks, which affect all workers, it is likely that the health care problem of minority populations will become the problem of Americans across racial, ethnic and some economic lines. Our society continues to put a bandage on this problem when we should be taking steps to cure it.
From birth itself, urban children of color are at a disadvantage. Infant mortality rates are much higher than for whites, and blacks and Latinos are more likely to have low-birth-weight babies. An African-American infant has more than twice the risk of dying in the first year of his or her life than a baby born to a white mother. Nearly one in four Hispanic children misses at least one of the full series of vaccines against childhood diseases such as polio.
African-Americans lead the nation in heart disease, obesity, stroke, diabetes, cancers and kidney disease. African-Americans have a 60 percent greater risk of death or disability from stroke and coronary disease than whites.
Hispanics have twice the rate of diabetes as white Americans. African-Americans and Hispanics, who comprise 25 percent of the U.S. population, account for 55 percent of the reported AIDS cases.
African-American women have three times the rate of high blood pressure, and are 40 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, when compared with white women. Hispanics have higher mortality rates due to cancer of the stomach and the cervix than non-Hispanic whites.
And then there is the cost of prescription drugs. Each of us has known or heard of individuals, not all of them minorities or low-income, who have postponed filling prescriptions because they simply are too expensive. Some take half the prescribed dosage to cut costs and as a result risk foregoing the benefits of their prescriptions.
When we read in the future about some brilliant new therapy or surgical technique, we should think about how many people, regardless of race, whose lives might have been saved who will not have access to it because their insurance will not cover it, or they lack insurance or they simply cannot afford it.
The issue of inadequate access to health care by the underinsured and uninsured should be addressed nationally. But with little hope of a national system of universal health care, workable local solutions must be considered.
Wayne State University medical faculty in their various roles in health delivery venues in Southeastern Michigan, primarily in the Detroit Medical Center, provided more than $150 million in uncompensated health care to local residents over a five-year period. Gov. Jennifer Granholm is supporting a provider fee for practicing physicians to relieve the financial burden on physicians who care for a disproportionate share of those on Medicaid. Hopefully, a bipartisan solution can be found soon.
We no longer can speak of civil liberties or human rights in this country without speaking of public health. Health care is either a right or it is a privilege. It is something that is yours simply by virtue of your membership in civilized human society, or it is a commodity available to those who can afford it. Most of us would say it is the former. Increasingly, it actually is the latter.
Irvin D. Reid is president of Wayne State University in Detroit. Send letters to The Detroit News, Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226, (313) 222-6417 or letters@detnews.com.
