Mary Smalls of Charleston, S.C., is proud as punch of her 18-year-old daughter, Saray, who has been accepted into each of the eight colleges to which she applied.
But she's also worried that she might have to send Saray off to college in the fall without any health insurance -- or that the daughter who has worked so hard might not be able to attend the college of her choice at all.
Smalls was laid off from her job at an auto parts factory just before Christmas. With a more than $900 monthly house payment and weekly unemployment pay of $365, the $665 monthly cost to retain her health coverage under COBRA is out of the question.
COBRA is short for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which allows most workers who have lost or changed jobs to buy into their former employer's health coverage.
"I'm between a rock and a rock," she told Catholic News Service by telephone March 20. "I feel like I'm letting (Saray) down. I've got to think of something between now and August."
The Smalls family is certainly not alone. In a report released in early March, the Center for American Progress Action Fund estimated that approximately 14,000 U.S. workers lost their health insurance every day in December and January.
The numbers come as no surprise to Nancy Anness, vice president of mission, advocacy and community clinics for St. Thomas Health Services in Nashville, Tenn., who said the system's health clinics --- which primarily serve the working poor --- "see a new uninsured patient every 52 seconds."
"I have seen the uninsured population grow and grow and grow," she added. "We're busier than ever."
A recent report from the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Insurance Status and Its Consequences shows that high rates of uninsurance in a community affect the whole community, not just those living without health insurance.
"When rates of uninsurance in communities are relatively high, insured adults in those communities are more likely to report difficulty obtaining needed health care and to be less satisfied with the care they receive," said Dr. John Z. Ayanian, a professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School and a member of the committee, in March 11 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.
"Privately insured, working-age adults in higher uninsurance areas, for example, are significantly less likely to report having a place to go when sick, having a doctor's visit or routine preventive care (including mammography), and seeing a specialist when needed," he added. "They are also less likely to be satisfied with their choice of primary-care and specialty physicians or to trust their doctor's decisions."
Although the Census Bureau estimates the number of Americans who were uninsured in 2007 at 45.7 million, a recent report from the consumer health care group Families USA puts the number who spent at least some part of 2007 or 2008 without health insurance at 86.7 million --- or one-third of the U.S. population under age 65.
Nearly four out of five (79.2 percent) of those without health coverage were in working families. Almost 70 percent of families without health insurance included a full-time worker, and another 9.5 percent had a part-time worker.
The seventh annual observance of Cover the Uninsured Week was set for March 22-28. As the week neared, the number of hearings, briefings and reports related to health care reform seemed to be increasing exponentially in Washington. President Barack Obama and a growing number of members of Congress all pledged to get down to the hard work of drawing up a specific plan for providing health insurance to all Americans.
But is Congress likely to act soon?
Even Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who calls health reform "my top priority --- not one of, but the top priority --- for the year," says it is an "ambitious goal" to get a bipartisan proposal to the Senate floor by June or July, as he hopes to do.
"I don't think I am naive at all about the problems that are out there," said Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, at a recent briefing for reporters sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA and the National Federation of Independent Business.
At a separate briefing sponsored by the three organizations, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, agreed with Baucus about the need to get a health care reform proposal to the Senate floor before the August recess.
"If we don't set an aggressive agenda, it won't get done this year," Grassley said March 19. "And if it's not done this year, it won't get done for the next four years."
Both senators mentioned the need to "reward quality of care, not quantity" as a central part of health care reform and stressed the importance of a reform plan that is widely supported by both parties.
"I don't want a 51-vote solution," said Baucus, while Grassley said he hoped the eventual reform plan "passes with 75-80 votes" in the Senate.
Smalls, a member of Evening of Prayer Church of God in Charleston, would just like to see a solution that would get her Saray off to college, with health insurance.
"I promised God I would do my best by" Saray and her two older brothers, who are grown and have their own health insurance, she said. "But the Lord is good, and I believe that he is working this thing out." ---CNS |