Falling though the safety net
From uninsured to advocate: Amy Anderson

Amy Anderson Photo by Eleanor Gorman

If you want to learn about being uninsured, ask former CareOregon member Amy Anderson. She’ll be more than willing to tell you all about it.

A couple of years back, Amy was fully employed. She had health care through her employer’s plan. She was happy with the care she got from Kaiser Permanente.

Then multiple chronic, incurable conditions—advanced hepatitis C, early cirrhosis, degenerative disc disease and diabetes—cost her the job.

Retraining wasn’t possible. She’d always wanted to be a computer tech, but diabetes had damaged her vision to the point that she could no longer read the manuals.

As for other work, no employers would look twice at her.

“I can’t pass the drug tests because of the morphine for my back,” Amy says.

With loss of the job, Amy also lost her health insurance. COBRA was just too expensive.

Amy pushed to get workers’ compensation for the work-related aspects of her back condition and made some progress. But then the employer declared bankruptcy.

During the months she was struggling through the paperwork to get disability payments, Amy’s income was low enough that she qualified for the Oregon Health Plan. And she was very happy to be matched with CareOregon and Multnomah County’s Mid Town Clinic.

The care she got through the clinic’s Primary Care Renewal pilot was particularly appealing, “Superb,” she calls it. Dr. Dean DeFontes and the “Building Better Care” team really made the concept of medical home real.

“I loved the service at Kaiser, and I was thrilled to get a new place that had service as good or better,” Amy says. “CareOregon took such good care of me. I was happy. I felt my life was safe.”

Finally approval for disability came through. Amy qualified to receive about $1,000 a month.

But that’s a few hundred dollars more than the upper limit a single person can have to be covered by the Oregon Health Plan.

And although she has conditions requiring medications costing $1,000 a month—conditions she’ll have for the rest of her life—Amy now has no health insurance.

The Multnomah County Health Department continues to provide care, and Amy gets medication through the county’s Prescription Patient Assistance program. But it’s a hard road.

Now Amy makes time to take her story—and her energy—into the community.

“I’ve become a hard-core advocate,” she says.

For 10 years, she’d volunteered as a chaplain for women in Multnomah County’s jails. Now she’s volunteering on the Cascadia Mental Health advisory board. She’s working with the Women with Disabilities Health Equity Coalition and is a member of the Multnomah County Health Council’s executive committee.

She has spoken before the Oregon Health Fund Board, wants to testify to the Legislature on health care reform, has spoken out with Oregonians for Health Security (see her comments on their web site) and hopes she can find a way to Washington, D.C., so she can advocate for health care reform there.

“I have learned along the way how to help myself and be an advocate,” she says. “Instead of giving up, I will spread out and go and help others.”

Uninsured: workers are most at risk

While retirees have Medicare and almost 90 percent of children have some form of health insurance, American workers are becoming more at risk of being among the ranks of the uninsured.

According to a recent report for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, nearly 1 in 5 workers has no health insurance. That compares to 1 in 7 in the mid 1990s.

The reason: Cost. The premium cost for employer-provided health insurance has climbed as much as eight times faster than wages.

See the full story in USA Today.

Health care costs, value handicap US in global economic race

A recent report by the Business Roundtable, representing CEOs of major U.S. companies, compares competition to a 100-yard dash. If such were the case, health care costs and values would give America’s top competitors a 23-yard head start.

In the U.S., employers provide the bulk of health care insurance for workers, whereas the health care of competitors is largely funded by the respective governments.

According to the Business Roundtable report, in 2006 Americans $1,928 per person on health care. That’s 2.5 times more than any other economically advanced country.

The report also compared statistics on health outcomes, including life expectancy. Combined, the 100-yard-dash analogy indicates that the U.S. trails Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France by 23 yards.