Could universal health care eliminate poverty?

Over the past week, I've received quite an education on the connection between poverty and lack of health insurance. I was co-host of a “news hunt” at NewsTrust, a vibrant media literacy project online. The NT community looked for the best journalism on health care, and read and reviewed a wide range of health care stories. Those that stayed with me most explained how the lives of the working poor have been destroyed when they lose health insurance.

Solving poverty is a complex issue, but one within our control if we act widely and directly on it. One solution to poverty in the United States is to provide universal health coverage. The working poor, who amount to roughly 80% of the 45 million uninsured in the U.S., will benefit most from this.

During the news hunt, I read and reviewed 36 health care stories (including a podcast and a documentary) from many sources. Based on what I've read, I know now that there is a consistent, tragic pattern that occurs when the working poor lose health insurance. The basic steps are:

1. working adult gets sick and loses job
2. after losing job, they lose their health insurance
3. they can no longer afford medications, so they get sicker
4. since they have no insurance, they receive either no care at all or substandard health care which they have to pay for themselves
5. the bills pile up
6. still sick, they cannot work, so they lose their home and belongings because any money they have goes to basic subsistence and paying medical bills
7. very few rebound, and many die

Providing health insurance, available no matter their employment status, would solve this horrible situation. It would help the working poor in multiple ways. It would give them access to any needed medical care for themselves and their dependents. They would stay healthy and be able to look for and get additional work. If sick workers could no longer work, they would still get care, which is the right and compassionate thing to provide.

When people are healthy, they can still contribute meaningfully to their communities; when many in one community are unemployed and sick, their community suffers along with them. With health insurance, adults can take care of the children who depend on them; without it, their children may lose, either temporarily or permanently, their mother's or father's care.

During this economic downturn, prospects for the working poor will absolutely become more dire. Adding guaranteed, universal health insurance to the poverty equation would directly improve the quality of their lives. To read some of the top rated stories from NewsTrust's health care news hunt and decide on this issue for yourself, click here.

THANK YOU to those who left comments here that they too would join Blog Action Day:

- Crafty Green Poet writes on "Poverty and the Environment".
- Lily Hydrangea penned "Blogging for Poverty".
- Nipun at 50 Word Fiction has an "uber short" take on the theme.
- Rachel's post is titled "My skin or my soul" over at The Slow-Cooked Sentence.

Comments

[Crafty Green Poet]

Excellent post, you make the connections very well. However I think universal health care could only mitigate poverty, not remove it, there's still a lot of poverty in the UK which does more or less still have universal healthcare.

Thanks for the link btw

[KG]

Hi Crafty — Thanks for your perspective. So it sounds like universal health care would be an important part of an equation, but not the whole solution. I'll think on this more.

You're welcome for the link!

[Melissa Marsh]

Having just returned from a trip to the UK, I can tell you from experience (after talking to two of my friends who are native Brits) that universal healthcare is NOT a fix-all solution. There national healthcare system is far from perfect and they both told me that there are severe problems with it.

I think there is a complicated relationship between insurance and the COST of healthcare. That is what we need to address. I think that we can all pretty much agree that doctors and dentists and other healthcare professionals are among the top paid workers in this country. Now not for a second do I think that they do not deserve to be paid well - but so well that they live in multi-million dollar mansions and drive luxury cars? Apologies if I step on anyone's toes with this, but I have a big problem with that.

My stepson the other day said that he was thinking about going into the healthcare profession because "they make good money." That attitude saddened me greatly. People should not go into the healthcare profession for the cost, but because they want to HELP people get well and stay well. Helping humanity should be the core of why they go into taht profession.

Or am I just being overly optimistic on that point?

[Melissa Marsh]

Sorry for all the typos - jet lag must still be affecting me!

[KG]

Hi Melissa — Good points about how in the UK, the NHS is not the perfect solution, and about how rising health care costs really have to be reigned in.

As more people become unemployed during this economic crisis, they will also lose health insurance paid for by their employers. This will add to the growing ranks of the uninsured. Something must be provided for these people along the lines of health care. If one catastrophic illness happens to someone who is unemployed AND without health insurance, how will they pay for it? With no job, how will they even pay their rent or mortgages? How will they even survive?

This problem could get much worse. With costs so high, everyone needs health insurance just to survive. Policy makers really need to look at this issue and make some decisions in the right direction, before millions more are out of work, uninsured, and sick/dying and in debt under medical bills.

No worries about your typos! Jet lag will do that to any writer.

[Melissa Marsh]

I completely agree that something must be done. I actually lived through such a health crsis last year - my husband had no health insurance and came down with a nasty staph infection. He lost his job because of it (he worked in the construction industry) and was in the hospital for nearly three weeks. The whole ordeal was just massive, and cost us nearly $100K. We were able to get help for the majority of it, but we're still stuck with a $3,000 bill that we're struggling to pay off. The thing is, since we didn't have insurance, they did not bill us at full cost. Now if we HAD had insurance, they would have really socked it to us. How twisted is that?

We barely held on to our house, barely paid the bills, barely survived. More than a year later, we're still feeling the ramifications of it.

It's a very, very big problem and the costs of healthcare and the insurance industry both need to be looked at, IMO.

[KG]

Melissa — I have read so much about this issue lately because of the NewsTrust news hunt, and you are not alone in your experience! I know people personally who, through once circumstance or another, found themselves uninsured and then hit with thousands of dollars in medical bills. Being faced with this completely took the energy out of their lives; these people are hard-working and conscientious and always pay their bills, yet they were devastated when faced with medical bills, and are still struggling to pay them off, just as you are.

Yes, the whole system needs to be looked at. Having so many uninsured people will continue to drag down so many lives and this will, in turn, affect our entire society as a whole.

I am glad to hear that you survived all of this, but I am sorry to hear that you (and so many millions of others!!!) have had to even be in this situation in the first place.