[Somehow, someday, James, I sincerely hope you get a clue. Yes, the US is chockablock with surprises. America's idolatry of free enterprise and military might leads the US to most profligate misuse of resources on the planet. This is perfectly obvious to anyone who, unlike yourself, doesn't traverse the globe bound, like Marley's ghost, in the clanking chains of so-called Living Marxism, perhaps the world's screwiest brand of libertarianism.]
March 5, 2007 Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile By ROBERT PEAR
SALISBURY, N.C. — Vicki H. Readling vividly remembers the start of 2006.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Happy new year,’ ” Ms. Readling recalled. “But I remember going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open up to a door of hell.”
Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.
Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.
“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
And that is one reason, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, that the problems of the uninsured have jumped to the top of the domestic political agenda in Washington and on the campaign trail.
Today, more than one-third of the uninsured — 17 million of the nearly 47 million — have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in households with at least one full-time worker.
Ms. Readling’s experience is typical; people who have had serious illnesses often have difficulty obtaining insurance. If coverage is available, the premiums are often more than they can afford.
While the government does not have an official definition of “middle class,” one commonly used point of reference is the median household income, which was $46,326 in 2005.
Katherine Swartz, a professor of health policy and economics at Harvard, said the soaring cost of health care was a major reason for the increase in the number of uninsured. She said it also reflected long-term changes in the economy, like the decline in manufacturing jobs and the growth in the share of workers in service industries and small businesses, which are less likely to provide health benefits.
Moreover, Ms. Swartz said, “Companies have become more aggressive in hiring people as temporary or contract workers with no fringe benefits.” ...
Carl
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