Safety Nets?

The headline in this Sunday's Times Union, one of the headlines, the one on the far right, so I guess the most important headline, above the fold, told us that "Slowing growth now hits insured." And they added that "Even those protected by employer plans find rising share of costs, limited coverage mean a medical emergency can plunge them into debt[.]"

Let's take a minute to get our minds around this. If you don't have medical insurance and you get sick, you have to spend down to the Medicaid threshold to be eligible for state-sponsored insurance. You basically have to impoverish yourself. You don't get thrown out of your house, but you may find a lien on it. You get to keep $725 a month, if I recall correctly, and that's a grand total of $8,700 dollars a year to live on. I think I have that right; I think that's really poverty.

But let's also get to this other point, the one about the insured who also wind-up in debt. So let's say you have a job, making more that $8,700 a year, and you don't have the correct coverage for exactly what ails you. So there's a deductible, or a co-pay, or a limit on coverage. So people go into debt: they don't send their children to private school, they don't make improvements on their houses, they don't have their hair done, they don't go out to dinner, they don't have the oil changed in their car. For how many years? How many illnesses?

Why do people have to go into debt if they get sick? Whether or not they have insurance, whether or not they have "enough" insurance, why do people have to get poor to get better? Am I missing something here? Why does good health get tied to good wealth? This is a scary idea, that if one has money then one has access to health care, and an absence of money means an absence of access to health care. (Remember that line from The X-Files, the "cigarette smoking man" to his son, "Access, agent Spender: it's about access.")

What about access? Let's read the New York State Constitution,Article XVII,Section 1:

• The aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions, and in such manner and by such means, as the legislature may from time to time determine.

Are we missing some there? If people have to go into debt to pay for their medical care, with or without medical insurance, that sounds like the definition of "needy" to me. Where is the help for these people? Why should anybody have to go into debt, in many cases ruinously so, just to live a healthy life, if not just to live, period. Don't we have a responsibility to provide "aid, care and support" to all? Isn't it time for a universal and all encompassing health care plan for all?