Growing number of people are victims of health care crisis

PELLICER & BURKE

Originally published February 11, 2002

It seems that one of the victims of Sept. 11 has been a vision for health care for our country's future. In the wake of the horror and amid the tightening of our security belts, national interest and attention to our medical system has essentially been abandoned.

Two years ago, I wrote of the 60 million Americans that either had no insurance or were underinsured. That figure has now soared to an appalling 88 million citizens. This too is a national tragedy and crisis.

In the emergency room we are seeing an escalating number of patients who have no other available health care. A recent evaluation of our own ER revealed that at least one in five has no health insurance. Additionally, many others are enrolled in woefully inadequate programs that provide coverage for very few, if any, meaningful services.

Clinics are overwhelmed

As the number of people without health care coverage escalates, we are less able to meet even the most basic of needs for what is being estimated as up to 27 percent of our population. In our own community and across our nation, clinics designed to serve the disenfranchised are being overwhelmed.

An alarming phenomenon which illustrates one of the components of this health care crisis is the change in the cross section of population now being cared for in our clinics for the underserved.

These clinics were originally intended to provide for those on governmental assistance and those even less fortunate, but there has been a population explosion of this entire segment of our society. The consequence is a harsh reality that those most in need have been pushed to the bottom and continue without any access to basic health care.

Shelters are inadequate

The changing demographics of those in need of our society's low-income services are reflected in the population that now seeks assistance from our community's shelters. In a recent visit to one of the shelters in town, I was struck with what was described as an escalating need among the working poor. No longer are shelters caring for only the homeless and destitute, there now is an entire segment of our society that works but cannot afford even the most basic needs of everyday life.

We can do better

Yesterday evening I watched the film "Kandahar." This two-hour film is a chilling expose of life in Afghanistan, and particularly that of women. Every day I see and hear of news that reminds me of how fortunate I am to have shown up in this world on American soil. Not that this entitles me to anything, but in comparison to so many other countries we seem to have it all.

Yet every day I see a further spiraling of a health-care system in trouble. Our system is by far the most expensive per capita in the world. We are the wealthiest nation on this planet, so therefore it seems only fitting that we would spend the most. But what are we getting for this?

We clearly do get the most up-to-date technology in the world, but we also have many glaring shortcomings. We are the only remaining industrialized country without at least some basic health coverage for all; we have the most expensive and unwieldy bureaucracy and payment system; and using World Health Organization markers (infant mortality, for example) we fall to a ranking as low as 25th in several categories that compare health care statistics among nations.

In my own practice, I routinely see patients without health care coverage in even the most surprising of circumstances. I recently have seen people who work for physicians, lawyers and all sorts of businesses who no longer have health insurance. Americans disenfranchised from health care are indeed an exploding population.

Our task as citizens is to remind one another and our political leaders that without our health we are in serious trouble as people and as a nation. We must again pursue our nation's health as a priority and develop a vision and sustainable plan for the years ahead.

Tom Burke wrote today's column. Joe Pellicer and Burke are physicians at Providence St. Peter Emergency Department. Send your medical questions, comments or stories to Notes from the ER, Olympia Emergency Services, Providence St. Peter Hospital, 413 Lilly Road, Olympia, WA 98506.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to main HEALTH CARE IN CRISIS index