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More than 40 million Americans – including children – have no health insurance. As the economy continues to weaken and good jobs are outsourced to countries where universal care exempts businesses from having to carry the health care burden, millions more are being thrown into the ranks of the uninsured. Then there are those who have changed jobs, and encountered insurers who simply will not cover them due to pre-existing conditions. These days if you’ve ever had treatment for things like acne, high cholesterol or carpel tunnel you can find yourself on the growing list of the “Uninsurable.”
Now, if you don’t mind jumping serious hoops and get an early start in the fiscal year, states do have sliding scale plans and Medicaid allotments. If you are covered by one of these, you do NOT count among the officially uninsured. In my officially “economically depressed” region, approximately two thirds of the citizens qualify for food stamps and medical care, but there’s only enough money to cover less than half of them. The rest simply do without, at least until they simply can’t do without anymore. The cost of indigent care at our few public hospitals is yet another perpetually unpaid bill.
This blog offered many good tips and links to useful resources for the uninsured in a previous 3-part series Inexpensive Health Care Tips, Part 1, including in Part 2 some strategies for getting necessary prescription medicines, and in Part 3 how to negotiate access to primary and emergency care.
Now that approximately half of the citizens of the US are either uninsured or underinsured (have high deductible “junk insurance” or coverage that is routinely denied), we cannot expect that things will get any better any time soon, at least not so long as the inside-the-beltway crowd has unlimited free health care. The progressive political website Daily Kos is hosting a Thursday series by diarist ‘nightowl724′, part 1 of which is 10 Survival Topics for the Uninsured.
There are some good resources, advice and strategies presented (topics 1 – 6 of the promised 10). The project arose from the Daily Kos Health Care Google Group. The posting schedule for this month is worth noting:
August 14: Survival Tips for the Uninsured, Part 1
August 15: Uninsured and Lucky to be Alive Part 1
August 21: Survival Tips for the Uninsured, Part 2
August 22: Uninsured and Lucky to be Alive Part 2
August 28: Living with a Chronic Illness
Interested readers can subscribe to the series here.
Links:
Inexpensive Health Care Tips, Part 1
nightowl724′s page
Inexpensive Health Care Tips: Intro
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 2: Necessary Medicines
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 3: Primary and Emergency Care
Basic Health Maintenance: Part 1
Basic Health Care Maintenance: Part II
Medical Rationing and Medical Tourism
