Before we get to our feature story. I’d like to encourage you to support your local community radio station which makes this broadcast possible. At the top of the show a group of folk asked and answered… why do we make IMC radio news? I’d like to tell you a few reasons why I make IMC radio news. First is because I want WEFT to have a locally produced news show. I hope that at some point this could even be a daily show. I want the show to be able to accommodate people who have never made radio and who might have limited time. The collective effort of the show makes this possible. I make IMC radio, because I want to educate myself. In making the “I’m sick of It” story this week. Not only did a learn an immense amount about healthcare issues. I also learned about certain legislators. I learned about how a bill is made into a law. I met several influential people. I began to really understand how even people with insurance can be affected by these issues. I found out about the local charity care programs for healthcare. In having this information I helped someone in dire circumstances be graciously relieved by Provena Medical Center of a $2400 emergency room hospital bill. This is an example of the main reason I produce IMC Radio News. I believe the information that we discover and relay on IMC radio news makes a difference in this world in ways we can’t even imagine.
I’ll also tell you that this story, after I finished all the interviews, which I gathered over a three week time frame, took me more than 10 hours to write and produce. So I do want you listeners to know that a lot of time and effort goes into the show. If you value the information, the local angle, the dedication of the contributors please take a moment now to call in and support the station that makes it all worth it and possible. Call WEFT at 359-9338 and pledge your support to locally produced public affairs programming. Thank you.
Our first story tonight is a testament to WEFT and IMC radio news making a difference in the world as IMC radio news and WEFT were forums for the reports on the following issue.
-Last Wednesday, Champaign police chief RT Finney and city manager Steve Carter withdrew their request from city council to purchase Taser electroshock guns for the police department.
Tasers are the latest form of weaponry used by thousands of police departments across the nation. They are small guns that propel two fish hook-like darts into victims. These darts are capable of deliverying a 50,000 volt shock to the victim for five seconds.
The grassroots campaign that formed to block tasers involved dozens of citizens from different walks of like who educated and lobbied council on the dangers and fears fthat the tasers would bring to this community.
Kimberlie Kranich has our report.
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Council members who voted against tasers were Kathy Enen, Giraldo Rosales, JW Pirtle and Michael LaDue. Those voting for tasers wer Vic McIntosh, Kin Pirok, Jim Green and Mayor Schweighart. Council member Tom Bruno was absent. WILL radio and TV contributed material for this report. Thanks to reporter and producer Kimberlie Kranich.
Please call and pledge your support to community radio and locally produced news programming. And now here is our feature story, “Sick Of It: A Checkup on National Healthcare.”
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Healthcare problems in America are reaching epidemic proportions. But this is not because we spend too little dollars on healthcare. As the matter of fact the US spends more than 1 trillion dollars per year on healthcare.
---Dr. David Gill is an emergency room physician in Clinton Illinois. He just won the Democratic nomination for a spot in the U.S. House of Representatives for Illinois’ 15th congressional district.
DG: “You know in Britain, in Canada, in the European countries, in Japan, their life span is a little longer than ours and when the World Healthcare Organization looks at healthcare quality they rank far higher than we do. We are 37th in the world in terms of healthcare quality. Their doing something right, it is good care and it’s cost efficient, as it is with our lack of a cohesive system we spend more than twice per person on health care in this country as nearly any other country and for no gain, we live slightly shorter time and healthcare quality is significantly worse than in other places.
--- In the U.S. there are nearly 44 million American living without any health insurance and that number is increasing at an unprecedented rate. In 2002 it is estimated that the number of people without healthcare coverage increased by more than 2 million which is the largest one-year increase in a decade. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die annually as a direct result of lack of health insurance. But those without insurance are not the only ones negatively affected by inadequate healthcare coverage.
Dr. Gill…
DG I saw a lady oh probably four weeks ago now. She came in with chest pains, 45 years old . She’d had a coronary bypass graph 10 months earlier and she was supposed to be treated for her high blood pressure and high cholesterol. And I asked her what she was taking and she said, “Nothing. My insurance doesn’t cover my medications and I can’t afford them.” Which, it just boggle the mind. Her insurance company, I should say the people of the world, that are the premium payers into the paid for, spent 10s of thousands of dollars on the bypass graph surgery and now are going to pay 10s of thousands more on closing off one of those graphs when I saw her, but they won’t put out pennies on the dollars to pay for her medication to keep these $50,000 bills from occurring in her life.
--- “Underinsured” is a term that is loosely thrown around, yet hard to define. Basically it could mean inadequate care for those who have some health insurance as was with the case of the heart patient of Dr Gill. Dr. Robert Boone of Champaign Illinois gives an example.
RB. So what they ask the employees to do is take greater deductibles and copay, so to the point where you can’t even afford to use the insurance. I’ll give you another example, last year… my wife has a family history of colon cancer, her Dad and her brother had colon cancer… so she is encouraged to have a colonoscopy. Well with our insurance it is a $500 deductible and a 70/80. So we wound up spending $1000 out of our own pocket to pay for something that should have been covered by insurance. Well we have a larger income than some people so some people may say, well I can’t afford to use that insurance to have that colonoscopy so I won’t get it. And I’ve had a number of cases that people, by the time they saw me had colon cancer that was advanced.
--- Underinsurance affects the patients, who have more serious medical problems due to lack of preventative care or lack of early or adequate care. It affects their family in quality of life issues. It affects all of the people who pay insurance premiums, because the cost of care is greater and so the insurance premiums rise. It affects all of society who bear the burdon of less productive members because of their illnessw. Here is Dr. Boone again.
RB His daughter drug him in. He was 59 years old. He hadn’t seen a doctor in fifteen years. Cause he felt ok. His Blood pressure was somewhere around 300 over 150. Yet he felt ok. The only reason he came in was that his daughter noticed his ankle was swelling and he hadn’t seen a doctor in 15 years. Now he wound up having kidney failure. Wound up on dialysis and he had no symptoms. So another case of were dialysis cost $30-37000 year, seeing a doctor 3 or 4 visits a year may have cost several hundred dollars and taking medication, lets say it was real expensive to treat him, couple thousand dollars. That’s still better than $37,000. So here you have a person whose quality of life, and he’s fifty nine, usually people who are fifty nine are able to get do around and have quality life and be productive and could even still be working, but now he won’t be. So direct cost maybe $37,000 to the community. But indirect cost, this guy doesn’t work anymore. He doesn’t pay taxes anymore.
SOLUTIONS
----America surely sees the need for a change in our healthcare coverage, as we practically elected Bill Clinton on this issue in his first term. Yet when the Clinton administration failed so completely in their attempt to create legislation that would provide healthcare coverage, much of America seems to have given up on the possibility of full coverage for all. Instead there are patchwork and stop gap measures being introduced and legislated.
In Illinois many of the almost 300 hospitals are not for profit hospitals. These hospitals, in order to retain their not-for-profit status, so that they don’t have to pay taxes, are required to be able to show that they provide charity. Because of this many of these hospitals have charity-care programs that include free or reduced fee services for the poor.
In Champaign Urbana the two major hospitals are both operating as not-for-profit corporations. Recently one of those hospitals, Provena Medical Center had it’s status rescinded. It is currently appealing the decision and Claudia Lenhoff of Champaign County Healthcare Consumers, a consumer advocacy group, explains that Provena has made significant changes for the better in their charity care program and as well they have changed their debt collection practices. The other hospital, Carle Foundation is being reviewed as to the suitability of keeping their not for practice status. They too are improving their charity practices. Ms. Lenhoff explains.
CL They’ve expanded their charity care and discount program, which is called Community Care. The expansion is that now if you are up to 150% of the federal poverty level you can get 100% discount, so you can get free care. If you are up to 150% of poverty level. If you are up to 150-250% of poverty level they will give you a discount on your bill.
--- 150% of poverty level is $27,150 for a family of four.
In Illinois a Senate bill mandating requirements for charity care in all Illinois hospitals, including for-profit-hospitals recently passed the senate and is expected to pass the house this month. The bill was written by Barrak Obama, who is currently an Illinois state senator and also the democratic nominee for US senator. The bill was introduced as the Hospital Discriminatory Pricing Policy Act. This name is derived from the fact that, because insurance companies, HMOs, PPOs and Medicare and Medicaid all negotiate discounted rates for those that they cover, those without any insurance actually pay more for the same services. This is discriminatory against those without insurance. Illinois State Senator Iris Martinez explains:
IM Well apparently, in the more poorer communities, where we have alot uninsured, whether it be the Hispanic community, minority communities, there are all these hospitals, what happens is some of them walk into the ER hospital room etc and what happens is because they are uninsured they come back, when they receive their bill in the mail, what happens is it is sometimes 7 – 8 % higher than a normal person who comes in with an insurance card.
--- The Bill originally was mandating that hospitals provide discounted care “to cost” those families who reached 300% of the poverty level. However that level and everything about the bill including it’s name was amended before it passed the Illinois senate last week. The bill, now named the Hospital Charity Assistance Act now addresses, among other things, debt collection practices and charity care levels. Here is Danny Chun, Assistant Vice President of Communication for the Illinois Hospital Association.
DC The bill as it was written and passed by the senate yesterday says that those at 100% of Federal poverty level or below get free care and those at 100-200% get care at-costs.
--- The bill would have provided much more financial assistance as it was originally written, but their was fear that at level it would have caused such burden on hospitals that many small hospitals could have been forced to close. Here again is Doctor David Gill, in addition to being an emergency room physician, he sets on the board of the municipal, that is, city owned not-for-profit hospital where he practices.
DG It would do significant harm to our financial picture, we struggle to keep our heads above water as it is. A bill like this would, I don’t mean to use scare tactics, or exaggerate, but a bill like this could put us over the edge as far as actually existing. It would no longer be here for all the people in this community who use the hospital.
--- So through negotiations between the senators and the Illinois Hospital Association among others, the bill was significantly reduced. Is the bill still a good thing? Yes, in that it does specify a level of care that hospitals have to provide and it forces the burden from being carried solely by the not-for-profit hospitals. Yes, in that it requires that hospitals inform patients about their charity services. Yes, in that it does provide guidelines for debt collection than are less draconian than some hospitals currently use. Yes, in that it does provide hospital bill relief for the poorest people. But herein lies one of the key components. Does providing hospital bill relief encourage waiting until hospitalization is required instead of seeking earlier, less expensive, more preventative care? Does providing tax relief to not for profit hospitals instead of using tax money to provide wrap around care send tax dollars in the wrong direction? Dr. Gill…
DG It’s a very well intended bill but I’m convinced and have been convinced for many many years that the solution to the problem is actually federal in nature. You know there is a lot of pain out there right now and as far as health care financing goes the effect of this bill would be to simply move the pain around from one place to another rather than correct the problem.
DG I think that the people who put this together and are proposing this, I have a lot of respect for those people, including Sen Obama, I think he could fix the problem more effectively if he gets to Washington and enacts the type of Federal legislation that I’d like to help push through.
DG I belong for about 12 years to a group called Physicians for a National Health Plan and they have proposed a plan for many years that has been looked at for many years by the congressional budget office and general accounting office and repeatedly is assessed the report always comes back that a plan like this would be quite doable and the country as a whole would save $150-280 billion a year. It would eliminate all of the waste and profiteering that goes on within the healthcare sector. It is a tax based single payer plan. It is important to note that when we talk about taxes, yes it’s a tax increase, but 95% of families would save substantially because they’d no longer be paying for health insurance premiums, copays or deductibles, medications.
The system that Dr. Gill is referring to is not “Socialized medicine” in which doctors and hospitals work for the government as is the case in Great Britian and Spain, but rather the system of socialized financing or socialized insurance such as is used in most European countries, Canada, Austrialia, and Japan.
DG It’s been shown in so many other developed countries of the world to work just fine and the fact that we don’t pursue this has been very frustrating to me. It is ultimately the reason why I decided to run for office. I think we need to change the personell in Washington. And I think it’s the kind of plan, I go visisting Rotary groups chambers of commerce, and triadiontional Republica groups and to encourage them to look at this. Because it’s good for business, big business likes it. The big 3 auto makers have repeatedly expressed their preference for a Canadian style healthcare system, small business it would do wonders for, farmers it would be great for. The only people who would have a legitimate argument against it for the most part would be the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry, the for profit insurance industry. For profit HMOs. Ultimatiely I think it is something that you could develop bi partisan support for.
--- The Physicians For National Health Plan believe that there is a lot of fear about a national insurance plan and that most of the fear is progated by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. For instance there is fear that the government will be making the medical decisions. But according to the PNHP that is not true, and even in countries like the UK and Spain that have socialized medicine the decisions are left to the patient and doctor. Cost containment measures would be publicly managed at the state level by an elected and appointed body that represents the people of that state. That body would decide on the benefit package, negotiate doctor fees and hospital budgets, as well as being responsible for the health planning and distribution of expensive technology.
The other fear is that there would need to be increased costs through taxes in order to fund such a system. In the United States, we have about 64% of our healthcare system financed by public money currently: that includes federal and state taxes, property taxes and tax subsidies. These funds pay for Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, coverage for public employees including teachers, elected officials, and military personnel. There are also hefty tax subsidies to employers and not-for-profit status of hospitals as was discussed earlier. Another 17% of health care is financed individually through out-of-pocket payments. The remaining 19% is the amount that private employers pay.
The universal public system would be financed this way: The public financing already funneled to Medicare and Medicaid would be retained. The gap would be funded by a 7% employer’s payroll tax and a 2% income tax on individuals. The payroll tax would replace all other employer expenses for employee’s health care. The income tax would take the place of all current insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and any and all other out of pocket payment. For the majority of people 2% would be much less than they pay for healthcare now.
Small businesses who currently offer no health insurance worry because they would be paying for insurance where they now pay nothing. However they would be receiving the same low rate as larger firms and this would level the playing field at the bargaining table between employers and employees, so larger firms would not have the advantage in recruiting and retaining employees.
Of course the main consideration is that everyone would have the same comprehensive health coverage, including all medical, hospital, eye care, dental, long-term care and mental health services. Dr. Robert Boone again as he comments on the difference between adequate early care and the patchwork approach of mandating charity care to hospitals.
RB At doctors offices, you know prevention, that care is not subsidized you know if you did enough of that then there would not be as many hospitalization that you have to pay more for. So a person who pays $100 dollars to see a doctor for their blood pressure control versus someone who comes in and spends 20-30,000 for a stroke. I mean gee whiz, it’s a little late.
--- If you want to learn more about National Health Insurance you can visit the webpage of the Physicians for National Health Insurance. www.pnhp.org.
To learn about the plight of the uninsured and be a part of discussing all possible solutions listeners can participate in “Cover The Uninsured Week” that will be held from May 10-16th. Nationally the week is being endorsed by organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFLCIA. There will be health fairs, clinics, prayer breakfasts, student initiatives, community forums and more. Doctor Boone is looking for individuals or organizations who are interested in the subject to bring education, debate, discussion of solutions to the table. For more information visit the web page www.covertheuninsuredweek.org or call Dr. Boone at 217-355-8880
For Urbana Champaign Independent Media Center News. I am Sandra Ahten.
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