Event highlights depth and breadth of health-insurance crisis
By Nick Claussen
Athens NEWS Associate Editor
May 5, 2008
In Athens County, 8,900 adults and 800 children have no health insurance, and thousands more are underinsured.
That was the main message of a press conference last Tuesday that was part of the Cover the Uninsured Week 2008 activities going on across the state. The Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage (OCHC) also put out a report, “Reasonable Costs: What Can Ohioans Afford to Pay for Health Care,” on Tuesday and held press conferences around Ohio.
Margaret Demko, southeast Ohio organizer for OCHC, said that in Ohio, eight out of 10 people who have no insurance are in working families. Many people have no way to pay for health insurance, and if they do have insurance they cannot afford the high deductibles that come along with their health plans, she said.
Gov. Ted Strickland and the Ohio General Assembly are looking at making changes to children’s health-care coverage in the state, Demko said, and now is the time for state residents to push for making positive changes to help these people who need insurance.
When presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton made statements about people without health insurance being turned away from medical care in Ohio, many people made a big deal about some of her comments, especially relating to a story from southeast Ohio. The facts of Clinton’s campaign story have been questioned, but Demko said that doesn’t detract from the truth that many people in Ohio are turned away from medical care when they do not have health insurance and have no way to pay for expensive tests and procedures.
Demko added that she knows of people this has happened to, and said it needs to be changed.
Family Healthcare Inc., a private non-profit corporation with medical facilities in Ross, Hocking, Vinton, Athens and Meigs counties, offers medical care to people with no health insurance, and offers sliding-scale fees to patients who meet certain income guidelines, explained Mark Bridenbaugh, executive director of Family Healthcare Inc. The organization has a medical clinic in The Plains, and can offer fees as low at $5 to some patients, he said.
Robert Gotfried, D.O., serves as one of the family-care physicians at the office, and said he sees how the lapse in health-care coverage hurts local families. One main problem is that while his office can provide care, he said, it can be very difficult to find specialists who will see patients who do not have health insurance.
Because of this, he and other doctors who work with people with no health insurance end up working on health issues that most family physicians would not work on, such as orthopedic problems, infectious hepatitis, mental health and even pulling teeth, Gotfried said.
Many people who have low-paying jobs just have no way to afford either the insurance premiums or the medical care they need, he said. If people have medical emergencies, they often end up going into debt to pay the bills, even if they do have some medical insurance, he added. For those with no insurance, “this debt is going to follow you for the rest of your life,” he said.
Health problems that get worse because individuals do not have health insurance and do not receive medical care when needed include diabetes, high blood pressure and depression, Gotfried said.
Demko added that when people with health insurance have a $250 deductible that they have no way of paying, they often decide not to go to the doctor for medical problems. Many people are also one job loss away from losing their health-care coverage, she added.
She and others are pushing state leaders to change the healthcare system in Ohio to make healthcare more affordable and accessible to all state residents.
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