May 2002 • Volume 8 • Number 5 |
When the AAFP Congress of Delegates last fall adopted the plan Assuring Health Care Coverage for All, the delegates may well have had in mind their own uninsured or underinsured patients.
In this article, two women describe the consequences of being uninsured. Read their stories, and then take action to publicize AAFP's plan for insuring all Americans.
 Some faces of the uninsured: (Top photo) Sharon and Rich Schober, here with twins Kelsey, left, and Seth, have been uninsured for 13 months. (Lower photo) Mary Collins has been uninsured for seven years. |
UNINSURED WIDOW
Mary Collins of Mishawaka, Ind., and her husband used to have health insurance through his employer, UniRoyal. Then Polycast bought the UniRoyal factory, Collins' husband retired, Polycast went bankrupt and -- about seven years ago -- the insurance disappeared.
Collins, now a 63-year-old widow with diabetes and high blood pressure, struggles to keep up with her medical bills. "In the richest country in the world, everybody should be able to have affordable health care," she says. "In a little more than a year, I'll reach 65 and be on Medicare, and I can't wait."
She goes to the family practice center at St. Joseph Medical Center in South Bend, Ind., for her care and pays on a sliding scale. Recently, her office visit was listed as costing $52, adjusted to $39; the glucose test cost $15; her flu shot, $11; and her pneumonia vaccination, $17.
Routine costs, right?
Easily paid?
Not by Collins. She tops those costs with about $167 worth of medicine per month, plus $20 worth of test strips and lancets for checking her glucose levels.
"I've slacked up on checking my blood sugar because everything is so expensive," she says. "When I go to the grocery store to buy things I should be eating, like fresh fruits and vegetables, sometimes they're too high, so I buy a lot of beans and potatoes, and I'm not supposed to have too much of those foods."
Collins should call the center each week to report her blood pressure levels. "I kind of fudge on that," she says, "but I've been really conscientious about taking my medicine."
That makes her different from many of the uninsured, including Sharon Schober and her family.
FAMILY TEMPORARILY WITHOUT INSURANCE
The Schobers live in Sutton, Alaska, and expect by early this month to regain insurance after 13 months without it.
"Early last year, my husband thought he had a chance to change his part-time work in maintenance at a hospital to full-time work with insurance coverage. I worked then as a home health nurse for more than 20 hours a week, so we had insurance through my work," says Sharon Schober. "We took the risk of having me take fewer hours so I could home-school our twins until they reached third grade."
They expected to be without coverage for three weeks. However, Rich Schober's full-time job didn't materialize until this spring.
He has restless leg syndrome, requiring a new drug that costs about $205 a month. "He uses less than the prescribed amount of the drug to try to get by," says Sharon Schober.
After enjoying good health most of her life, she had a gall bladder attack in August. "I ended up in the emergency room and then in surgery three days later," she says. "The ER bills were scary enough, but the surgery bills are incredibly frightening. I haven't even thought about how long it'll take us to pay the $15,000 for the surgery."
For primary care, the Schobers see Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, M.D., of Wasilla, Alaska, the AAFP's 2002 Family Physician of the Year. She credits the Schobers: "They are faithful about making regular payments on their bill."
Baldwin-Johnson asks families just to keep paying something. "She's flexible," says Sharon Schober. "She doesn't require X amount by a set date."
Within four months of going without insurance, the Schober children were enrolled in Denali Kid Care, a State Children's Health Insurance Program. Sharon Schober says her nursing background led her to the program. "I was familiar with the health care system, knew Denali Kid Care existed, knew how to go about getting it," she says. "And I knew we needed it."
FP Report is published by the
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Copyright © 2002 by
American Academy of Family Physicians.