Report Shows Women Have Disadvantage In Current Health Care System

By Mariko Lamb, Talk Radio News Service

Members of the Joint Economic Committee released a report Thursday that revealed 1.4 million women have lost their health insurance during the recession. More than 1 million of those lost were due to a spouse’s job loss.

“Clearly the system is broken when 1 million women lose their health insurance because their spouses lose their jobs,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)

“Under the status quo, women are more vulnerable to higher health care costs than men and when they lose their coverage the impact is felt heavily on their children and their families,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said.

Sarah Wildman, a self-employed journalist and mother, testified about her experience with what she described as an “inappropriate health care plan”.

“I didn’t realize that my choice to start a family would put us into debt,” Wildman said, after receiving a $22,000 hospital bill from her health insurance company that initially claimed to cover maternity care. “When you buy insurance on your own, there’s no guarantee that what you pay for is what you get,” she said, calling her private sector health insurance “anti-middle class, anti-entrepreneurial, and anti-family.”

“It is so important that the voices of people like Mrs. Wildman not be drowned out,” Rep, Cummings said. “We can not allow the current system to continue to break America’s families, businesses, and economies, and we must not allow it to break American women,” he said, urging Congress to continue promoting health care reform legislation that ensures women access to quality health care without being charged higher premiums than men.

Baby Boomers Hit Retirement Age

By Courtney Costello- Talk Radio News Service

Volunteers of America hosted a discussion today on the baby boomer generation’s affect on the future of health care and Social Security.

America is at a turning point, where the oldest baby boomers will be 65 in the next two years. By 2030 there will be an estimated 71 million seniors in comparison to the current 37 million seniors, said Donna Brazile, Democratic political strategist and moderator at the discussion.

Baby Boomers were born between the years 1946 to 1964 and it is estimated that there were 77 million babies born within these years.
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Said Brazile, “We have to re-think the way that we deliver care for our nation’s older Americans in the future.”

Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader, said, “Clearly cost is an issue that we have to address...we also need to bring everyone under the system resulting in coverage for all... many Americans are underinsured [and] 48% of the people who have insurance don’t have the care they need today.”

Today, one of the biggest health concerns for seniors in this country is Alzheimer’s, and with more research, more positive outcomes can be expected.

“If you could imagine a world without Alzheimer's by 2030, you have changed for probably half the baby boomers the trajectory of their life, and you have changed for their children a great deal of the trajectory of their lives,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

On the issue of the future of Social Security, author and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson said, “trust in the system is urgent to reassure people that social security will be there.”

“The earlier we find a way to migrate towards some kind of compound [social security] interest model, where you know what you have invested, and you get back the compound interest effect for 50-55 years of work...remember people will work longer in the next generation, not shorter.” said Gingrich.

85 % of Americans expect long term care to be a part of health care reform... It requires Presidential leadership, said the panel.

Congress presses for children's health insurance

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) commented on Congressional efforts to pass the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), describing it as a symbol of President Elect Barack Obama's promise to bring change to America.

According to data released by the Majority Leader's office, SCHIP will provide health insurance for over 11 million children, give parents greater access to preventative care, and allow states to enroll documented immigrant children in the country in health programs without waiting the five year waiting period.

Hoyer addressed concerns raised by conservatives that SCHIP will provide federal funds for children in the U.S. illegally, dismissing the complaint as a red herring and promising that nobody in the country illegally will receives SCHIPS's benefits.

Despite having support from a number of Republicans, SCHIP was vetoed twice in 2007 by President Bush. Following the initial vetoes, Hoyer stated that Democrats in Congress pledged that if they were reelected under a Democratic President they would pursue SCHIP again.

The Majority Leader also discussed upcoming legislation that would reform the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The legislation seeks to enforce the original intentions of the bill, such as requiring a substantial amount of the remaining $350 billion to be used for lending, and will also be subjected to additional oversight.

Struggles and victories in Chinese and Indian health issues

“Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere” held a briefing on health in India and China. China faces a massive obesity epidemic and problems with insurance coverage. India is confronting AIDS. And, both China and India have aging populations.

Philip Musgrove, Deputy Editor of “Health Affairs,” said that although it seems that infant mortality is decreasing and health spending is increasing in China and India, those positive results are deceptive. He said that lower infant mortality rates do not necessarily reflect better health. Also, the increased health spending is out-of-pocket, not national funding. He said that China struggles to help people in the interior of the country and that India must help citizens in areas that have not kept up with national progress.

Kees Kostermans of the World Bank said that India handles its AIDS problems well. Their programs started early, in 1987, with strong focuses on prevention and data collection. Because of India’s high level of political commitment and ambitious programs targeted to high-risk groups, HIV prevalence in India decreased.

Somnath Chatterji from the World Health Organization added that Chinese and Indian populations are aging. He said that in the next four decades, 40 percent of the world’s old will live in India and China. The two nations’ populations are growing older, but health is getting worse. He recommended educating and empowering people to care for themselves now rather than wait for the sudden increase in mortality.

On the topic of Chinese health insurance, Tsung-Mei Cheng from Princeton University said that China hopes to achieve universal health coverage by 2020.

Health insurance a societal obligation

Forty-five million uninsured Americans prompted the Senate Finance Committee to discuss ways to reform health care, listening to recommendations that could help to provide insurance coverage to the uninsured. According to panelists, the uninsured are shut out of the system due to increasingly high health care costs, high insurance rates, and partial coverage.

Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna, told the committee that lowering insurance rates will require lowering the cost of health care since the price of insurance reflects on the cost of treatment. Williams also said universal participation in health insurance is necessary to lower prices and help those in need, comparing societal assistance in health care to food taxes that help feed the hungry. He noted that patients seeking coverage after being diagnosed with a serious illness is not insurance but in fact a way of financing treatment, suggesting that measures be taken to combat reactionary purchases of health insurance. Williams also said that grouping people by methods other than risk factors would allow for an even distribution of healthy and unhealthy and prevent costs from skyrocketing due to an influx of customers needing high remittances.

Mark Hall, a professor at Wake Forest University, agreed with Williams’s idea of grouping customers into pools without determining risk factors. Hall said that one percent of the American population uses almost 25 percent of federal expenditures on health care while half the population uses four percent. Hall said that pooling would allow natural statistics to have an effect on health prices by preventing concentration of the sick. Raymond Arth, a small business owner from Ohio, urged the committee to be conscious of small business owners. Arth said that small business owners desire to provide health insurance to employees but that increasing renewal figures make it difficult financially.