The latest figures from February set the United States’ unemployment rate at 8.1 percent and growing. As mentioned in the article “Students hang on to health insurance” (News, March 5), a record number of Americans are losing their jobs and losing all means of health care along with them.
Insurance costs too much, and this deters employers from providing good health care benefits, or sometimes any at all. Meanwhile, insurance companies are making record profits by paying for the least amount of care they can get away with under their policies.
As intimidating as that already sounds, we as students are the ones that should be most concerned. Young adults are the most uninsured age group in the United States. Although spoiled by a reliable health care plan that we may or may not take advantage of, UCLA’s Student Health Insurance Plan, we will eventually graduate and have to find our own way.
As a volunteer of UCLA’s chapter of Students for Community Outreach, Promotion and Education, I work to find free or low-cost resources such as dental care, childcare, legal assistance and other solutions for health clinic patients, and I regularly encounter families in serious economic hardship.
Working last quarter at the Venice Family Clinic has shown me just how many people are in need of health care. It is the largest free clinic in the nation, but 75 percent of the patients are not covered by health insurance. For two hours every Wednesday, I spoke with patients in the crowded waiting room who had no alternative but to seek out the few clinics that offer good, affordable health care.
This quarter, I am situated at UCLA’s Medical Plaza, which is just a couple of blocks away from campus. Still, half of the patients I speak to are uninsured. Furthermore, through reviewing scores of health assistance programs, I have found that there are very few options available for adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who are not war veterans, part of an underrepresented group or disabled. Although low-cost medical clinics do a great job in assisting those in need of health care, the system as a whole is unsustainable ““ especially now that more and more people are losing dependable health insurance.
What we need is comprehensive reform that expands coverage and lowers costs of insurance.
It is estimated that one-third to half of every dollar spent on health care in America does not actually improve the health of the person because there is no one looking at the system and identifying which procedures are actually making people healthier.
Bureaucratic waste is also an issue when every insurance company requires different paperwork. It is estimated that $10 billion is spent on billing each year in California alone, with the average doctor spending two full weeks filling out paperwork. Finally, drug companies spend as much money on advertising and marketing drugs as they do on research ““ approximately $30 billion.
President Barack Obama is taking the right course of action by pursuing health care reform. However, it is important to keep the issue a priority. Students on campus are organizing to work with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a leader on this issue, to pass a law that would create a uniform billing system, restrict the money drug companies spend on marketing and thereby reduce the cost of the drug, and ultimately expand health care coverage by getting costs under control.