Health Care for Uninsured

Health Care for Uninsured?

by Frank Pizzoli

A decade ago, I published two stories and produced a videotape on the woes of living day-to-day with no health care coverage. I sat in a room with a hundred other people at Penn State-Harrisburg where we discussed, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tipper Gore, and then-Senator Harris Wofford, ways to help millions of citizens who fear they will get sick (as we all eventually do) and have no access to health care.

At the time, there were 1.2 million citizens of Pennsylvania without any health care coverage. Nationally, there were 37 million in the same predicament. Today, 1.2 million Pennsylvanians still have no coverage; nationwide the number has grown to 44.3 million.

In 1998, one of every 11 children, or 267,000, was without health insurance. Most of the uninsured are employed or dependents of employed individuals, the working poor. By what rationale would we allow this situation to continue? There are no winners.

One solution is to establish an uncompensated care fund with Tobacco Settlement money, creating a long-lasting, humane public policy that, at the end of the day, mostly helps children. At last count, Pennsylvania hospitals provided $704 million in charity care. The growing burden of providing care to the uninsured, up 8.6 percent for acute care hospitals according to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, comes at a time when hospitals face massive cuts under the federal Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

“Pennsylvania’s hospitals believe that every resident should have access to affordable, quality health,” according to Carolyn F. Scanlon, president of The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania. Recently, she addressed the issue at a Capitol news conference.

Think whatever else you want about him, but even Donald Trump knows that you must take care of people. “I employ thousands of people. We must take care of people. What else is this country about, if not taking care of folks?” he stressed to Geraldo Rivera recently.

Bill Bradley has a comprehensive health care reform plan out there. Jesse Ventura is willing to grapple with the issue. Pat Buchanan thinks people who get sick are bad and deserve a high fever. Stranger things have happened. Two-term Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh was sitting U.S. Attorney General when he ran for one of the state’s Senate seats. He expected a coronation. Instead, Harris Wofford trounced him at the polls on the health care issue.

The political climate could once again be ripe for health care reform. Prudent use of Tobacco Settlement funds could set the pace for realistic change and treatment of a festering boil on the nation’s backside.