notes from outside

Many thanks to Arthur Valdez of San Antonio Healthcare Now Coalition for the forwarded article. ~K.

Opinion: How long can Texas turn its back on us?
Editorial Board
Austin American-Statesman
1/25/2008

When it comes to health insurance, Texas leads the nation with the highest percentage of people who don’t have coverage. About one in fourTexans - 5.7 million people - lack health insurance. That is a disgrace. Yet, as high as those figures are, and have been for many years, they still haven’t grabbed the full attention of Texas leaders, or the general public for that matter.

Three states have enacted universal health coverage plans for their residents, and a dozen others are considering similar measures. Texas ought to be doing the same. But we have not seen movement or leadership on that front.

The Legislature last year did expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a government program to help children of working parents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to buy private health insurance. That was the right thing to do. But the increase came after lawmakers made deep cuts to the program, so little ground was
gained in expanding CHIP coverage over the years that Texas has participated in the program.

In Texas, there is a mind-set that the uninsured are “those people” - the poor, the unemployed, the immigrants. If they lack health insurance, some believe, it is because they don’t work hard enough. Perhaps they are slackers, the kind of people who would rather be on the government dole than do an honest day’s work. They are people who have made poor choices. Then there are the undocumented workers who are here illegally. Rather than believe the system is broken, too many Texans blame the victim. But increasingly, our misperceptions are being shattered by reality. And that is where we are in Texas, at   the crossroads of a broken health care system that is becoming more difficult to ignore,
defend or justify.

American-Statesman reporter Corrie MacLaggan reported in Sunday’s editions that the uninsured are looking less like “those people” and a lot more like “us.” Most are employed; most are working age; and most are U.S. citizens. We learned that the rolls of uninsured Americans have grown from 40 million people to 47 million in just six years. And most
telling is that Texas still would be No. 1 in the nation for the highest percentage of people without health coverage even if we subtracted illegal immigrants from that pool.

In her report, MacLaggan profiled five people without health insurance: Austin technical writer Susan Hammack; Houston mother and office manager Katonya Price; retired El  Paso firefighter Ralph Romero; unemployed welder David Grose of Paris; and teaching assistant Cynthia Pacheco of Houston. In reading their stories, it’s clear they are working hard to make ends meet. Grose had worked up until a few months ago when he took leave to deal with his cancer. In neglecting the problem, many believe we have avoided higher taxes or fees that would be used to pay for health insurance. But if ever there was a myth about our health care system, that is the granddaddy of them all. In the end, we pay more for the uninsured because they use emergency rooms for routine care. When they don’t pay for their medical costs, those expenses don’t evaporate into thin air; they land on the rest of us in the form of increased taxes, fees or cuts in services.

It’s no surprise then that health care has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. Democrats and Republicans are talking about solutions, offering sharp  differences about how to expand health coverage for more Americans. Texas doesn’t have to wait for Congress or a new president. It can and should act now.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter”
Dr. Martin Luther King

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