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Fixing A System Where Children Die For Lack of Health Coverage
WASHINGTON -- Residents in and around the nation's capital woke up one recent morning to the sort of bad news that we like to think doesn't happen in America: A child died from lack of dental care. Deamonte Driver, a seventh-grader in Prince George's County, died Feb. 25. Bacteria from an abscessed tooth had spread to his brain, doctors said. Two operations and eight weeks of care and therapy failed to save him. Total cost: more than $250,000.
His mother, Alyce Driver, worked at low-wage jobs. She did not have health insurance. Between her struggles to get coverage and wide cracks in Maryland's public health-care system, her child never got the $60 tooth extraction that would have saved his life.
Now Deamonte's story is just one in a stack of horror stories that Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, trucks over to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to close gaps in health coverage for children.
The stories are horribly sad. They include children like Devante Johnson, 14, who died in Houston in March. His kidney cancer went untreated for four months because of a paperwork snafu. A Texas state representative intervened, but by then it was too late.
There are stories of children whose families lost health coverage when the families moved from one state to another.
Some children get caught without coverage because their parents must constantly reapply for it, even when they stay in the same state. Others are trapped in the gap when state Medicaid eligibility levels or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program levels are too low and private insurance too expensive. That $40 billion, 10-year program, commonly known as SCHIP, is up for reauthorization. The program provided health-care coverage for an estimated 6 million children who otherwise would not have been covered. States are free to design their programs, helped by federal grants and subsidies.
There's a good chance the program will be reauthorized at current funding levels, insiders say. But with health costs skyrocketing, that would be, in effect, a cut.
Bills to double SCHIP spending over the next five years are being pushed by Rep. John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York.
Who could oppose this noble effort on behalf of children's health? The usual suspects. There are ideologues who have never found a government-funded health program they didn't dislike. There also are budget hawks who quite reasonably worry about what revenue needs to be raised or what program needs to be cut in order to pay for it.
What's needed is leadership to persuade Congress that children shouldn't be allowed to slip through the growing cracks in health-care coverage. "Covering all children is an achievable goal in 2007," Ms. Edelman told me. "It won't happen without large-scale mobilization and public awareness."
Ms. Edelman's organization endorses a similar bill by Rep. Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, that would add pregnant women, mental, dental and vision care. It would also equalize access to prevent children in poorer states from being shortchanged.
Ms. Edelman's husband, Peter, was an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services in President Clinton's administration. But the Edelmans parted company with the Clintons over the 1996 welfare-reform law.
The good news is that child poverty has declined sharply since then, helped by a largely healthy economy. But the working poor are having a tougher time making ends meet, especially amid rising health-care costs.
We have the best health-care system in the world, we are constantly told, and that's true. But the best in the world doesn't do much good to those who can't gain access to it. Everyone should have coverage. Our children are the best place to start.
Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
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10 Comments so far
Show AllHere we go again: single payer is the only just, sustainable health care financing mechanism. H.R. 676 is out there; we need to push our Reps. to co-sponsor if they haven't already, and we need to push our Senators to sponsor a companion bill.
www.citzensforhr676.org
www.kucinich.us
www.healthcare-now.org
Anyone proposing "universal access" plans that keep insurance companies in the picture is selling out.
Pharma and insurance companies are going to fight tooth and nail to keep their parasitic hold on the money that ought to be going to providers -- not pharma or insurers' pockets or to our legislators' campaign coffers -- so it ain't gonna be easy but it is the ultimate answer. It's as simple as that and as complicated as that.
"Here we go again: single payer is the only just, sustainable health care financing mechanism."
I agree.
I keep hearing this "Nur fuer Kindern" nonsense and naturally I am unhappy.
- Don't these people know that children need both insurance and parents?
- or, they know, but they believe that this country needs only young and healthy labor force in it's Arbeit mach frei
(workplace) setting, and
- they hope that lack of health care for adults would "nicely" solve the problem of the undesirable (in the their sick minds)
We need to be careful to frame this problem not as lack of "insurance" or "coverage" -- but instead couch it at the fundamental bullseye: lack of access to health care.
This is important, because the liberal (as opposed to progressive) solution may likely take the form of a private subsidy, or some government program that allows the insurance industry to skim off tax dollars for their troubles in paper shuffling.
Arguably the HMO/insurance arrangement is the problem, and the solution is single-payer. Not a forced subsidy of a parasitic system which is little more than a gatekeeping anti-industry over access to health care.
Wait a minute folks. Are you saying that the insurance industry should get out of the healthcare business? Don't you see that his great American capitalist institution generously provides layer after layer of bureaucrats and expert bean counters to decide which treatment options should be available? It keeps in check the relationship between wasteful doctors and greedy patients and makes huge, well-deserved profits off the sick and dying in order to contribute vast sums to the honorable corporate politicians who protect their monopoly. To threaten this sacred, market-driven system is to invite creeping (gasp!) SOCIALISM. If not for the brave Democrats and Republicans who passed the latest bankruptcy bill, many of these sick people (most of whom are freeloaders anyway) would actually try to discharge the overwhelming costs they incurred--by selfishly trying to stay healthy and alive--in bankruptcy court! Think of it. If single-payer national health care were to take the profit out of gambling on the health of the American people, what kind of fate would await our great country? We'd be just like all those other insignificant little countries who use their citizens' tax money for the benefit of the people, instead of financing grand foreign military adventures and fattening the portfolios of the super rich who contribute so much to the American way of life. Watch out--you crazy left-wingers are about to ruin the country. If you take away the ability of hardworking capitalists to make a profit in the healthcare business, what will you want next? Control over the so-called public airwaves? Equal rights and opportunities for "those people"? Will you make polluters, instead of taxpayers, have to pay to clean up the messes they make? The next thing you'll be saying is that imperialism--making the world safe for corporate interests--is a bad thing. Sheesh...
In the old days 1960-1970's, children could get coverage, anyone whom needed help could get a state card and pay what they could, they could see the dentist, doctor, or eye care. If you were too poor to pay then it was free, but if you had any kind of job they would charge you whatever you could afford. Even if it was only one dollar. Things have gotten worse and it did not have to. I am talking of the State of Illinois, I do not know about the others, but I as an orphan and female had to use the State as parents, so I know what they were doing.
There's plenty of room between insurance parasitism (the current health care "system") and socialism. Single-payer funded by a highly progressive tax system (basically no taxes on the poor and lower- middle-class) might result in a certain amount of funds freed up for everyone in an expense account -- to spend any way s/he wished. There could be public clinics, alternative treatments, private options, etc. I can't produce the reference right now, but I've read that the insurance anti-industry (it doesn't actually build anything) ADDS like 10-20% up-front cost to medical care on average. Not to mention the grief of time delays, frustration that everyone has, being denied coverage, etc.
Correction:
I meant, of course:
"Don't these people know that children need both health care and parents?
Sorry, I typed in a hurry.
This is a repeating tragedy. What is disgusting is that no matter what, the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and mega-healthcare HMOs continue to rake in the profits. The US has the worst healthcare in the industrialized world. We must surely have the highest percent of population who have inadequate coverage and who don't have the resources to pay privately for medical care if the need arises. Many people are simply playing russian roulette when it comes to medical care. For those fortunate to have insurance coverage, we often find the "health" care to be focused mainly on disease treatment. There is little to no incentive for annual exams, preventive screening, etc. because these measure cost extra. So insurance companies receive their premiums while providing no services for their subscribers who do not fall ill in any given month. If a subscriber would like to have screening (colonoscopy,e.g.) for various preventable and treatable conditions they must pay a hefty additional portion. Somehow we need to balance the profit motive with some actual universal medical care.
"I was hungred and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. Naked and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.... Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt. 25:35-40).
"Whoso shall offend one of these little ones [children] which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt. 18:6)
JH wrote:
"Somehow we need to balance the profit motive with some actual universal medical care"
We should not need to balance the profit motive with anything, we have to get rid of the profit motive.
A Socialist Model for Health Care is the only real solution.
Universal Health Care should be a human right, enshrined in the Constitution.