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News :: Media |
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Champaign County Health Care Practices Make Front Page Of Wall Street Journal: News-Gazette Ignores Story |
Current rating: 0 |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
30 Oct 2003
Modified: 06:58:09 PM |
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The News-Gazette has a hefty income from local health care providers, who often take out full page ads touting their services in the newspaper. Yet, there was no news in today's New-Gazette about a major local story, the publication of a front page article in today's (30 October 2003) Wall Street Journal detailing the aggressive collection practices utilized by local health care providers against those in poverty who cannot make payments on their bills. |
The News-Gazette has a hefty income from local health care providers, who often take out full page ads touting their services in the newspaper. Yet, there was no news in today's News-Gazette about a major local story, the publication of a front page article in today's (30 October 2003) Wall Street Journal detailing the aggressive collection practices utilized by local health care providers against those in poverty who cannot make payments on their bills.
This important news was announced today by Champaign County Health Care Consumer's Brooke Anderson, who was speaking at a forum at the University YMCA sponsored by the Graduate Employees' Organization. The forum was called to detail the situation of GEO members, who often suffer large bills due to inadequate insurance provided to graduate students by the University of Illinois.
Unlike many insititutions in the UI's cohort, which provide full health care packages to their graduate employees, often at no expense, the UI charges about $1,100 a year for health care with often inadequate coverage. Students with major illnesses or who are involved in an accident can face bills of thousands of dollars, while making only a couple of hundred dollars a week in wages. The UI may have Nobel Prize winners among its faculty, but it treats many of its workers like sweatshop labor when it comes to health insurance.
This situation can lead to student-employees facing huge bills. Local health care providers have a national reputation, detailed in the Wall Street Journal article, for aggressive and demeaning collection practices. These include over-billing, court action against clients in poverty (which includes most graduate students at the wage level provided by the UI), and the threat of arrest for what they owe.
One would think that such a major story would rate at least minimal coverage by the News-Gazette, but the story appears to be too hot for the N-G to handle. There was no coverage of this major story in today's paper.
Perhaps the N-G doesn't want to risk its lucrative advertising income from local health care providers by angering them by publishing this story locally. On the other hand, it must be rather embarrassing to the N-G to be scooped by a bastion of the capitalist press such as the WSJ on a story they have mostly ignored for years. In any case, it will be interesting to see if the story is ever mentioned in the N-G.
While the story itself is only available online to WSJ subscribers, here is the abstract from the WSJ's website:
How Some Hospitals Collect Debts
Hospitals such as Carle Foundation Hospital in Illinois are becoming some of America's most aggressive debt-collectors, putting increasing pressure on poor and uninsured patients to settle their bills.
Be sure and read the story at the library if you are not a Wall Street Journal subscriber. If you are a subscriber, you might consider posting a copy here on UC IMC as a public service, since it looks like there will be a media blackout on it locally.
Except for Indymedia, of course. |
