March 12, 2003
BY CINDY RICHARDS
The Chicago Sun-Times
For 30 years, Rebecca Sawyer-Spoon and her husband, Joe, lived the American dream. They ran a small business, paid their taxes and prospered. Now, she’s a statistic.
Sawyer-Spoon is one of the 41 million Americans without health insurance, even though she works full time and brings home a comfortable, middle-class living.
She was one of several victims of the Great American Health Debacle to speak during a moving town meeting Monday at the Harold Washington Library, one of a score of events being staged this week in Chicago–and hundreds being staged across the country–as part of ”Cover the Uninsured Week.” The week is supposed to raise awareness of the growing number of working Americans who either can’t get health insurance or can’t afford the insurance they could get. The message, however, is getting lost amid the media scramble to cover the war on terror.
”Why isn’t health care considered protection by the government? We feel so much more terrorized in our daily lives by our lack of access to health care than we do by foreign terrorist attacks,” said Sawyer-Spoon, a resident of rural Downstate Charleston.
The Spoons had health insurance until their provider went out of business. She had been diagnosed with a mild case of asthma, and her husband was diagnosed with high cholesterol. Their pre-existing conditions precluded them from finding other insurance.
Now, when she goes to the doctor to renew her asthma prescription, Sawyer-Spoon said, ”I won’t let him touch me.” What if he found some other health problem?
She could get the necessary treatment and then file bankruptcy to avoid paying for it. That’s what doctors suggested Chicagoan Frances Camberis do when she was diagnosed with a fibroid tumor and spent four uninsured days in the hospital. She hadn’t been able to get health insurance, Camberis said, ”because I’m fat.” The bill for that hospital stay was $28,000. She liquidated her retirement plan to pay it.
Not only do the uninsured wait to get necessary treatment, ensuring that they will need more costly care, they pay more for the care they get. A study released last week by the Service Employees International Union shows people who pay medical bills themselves are charged more for the same services. Large insurance companies, large employers and the federal government (which pays for 60 percent of health care through Medicare and Medicaid) use their buying power to negotiate better rates from doctors and hospitals.
All in all, it was a rather depressing two hours. Having been a statistic in the past–my union’s health insurer collected our premiums but never paid our providers and ended up in receivership, leaving hundreds of us uninsured and hounded by bill collectors–this is a subject near and dear to my heart. During the time I was uninsured, a nasty cold turned into pneumonia, which triggered asthma. I doubt I will ever be able to buy an individual health insurance policy again.
While Monday’s meeting was long on emotion, it was woefully short on solutions. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) opened the session by lamenting the lack of leadership on this issue in Washington, then headed off to catch a plane before explaining why he hasn’t stepped up to the plate. Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.), who worked in the Clinton White House the last time health care topped America’s political agenda, will introduce a bill soon that would expand coverage for lower-income Americans.
But this is no longer a lower- income problem. It is a mainstream problem. The flagging economy is sapping employers’ ability to offer health insurance, the high cost of technology and malpractice insurance is raising the cost of health care, and the risk aversion of insurers is leaving more and more Americans unable to get coverage at any cost. Even those of us who have health insurance today have no guarantee we’ll still have it tomorrow should a layoff, the death of an insurance-providing spouse or even a costly illness mean the end of our insurance benefits.
This is the terror President Bush should be fighting.