Myth versus reality on the uninsured
About 75 percent of Americans who work part-time can’t get health insurance through their jobs. Missouri lawmakers are part of the fortunate 25 percent. The part-time lawmakers, whose five-month legislative session ended Friday, not only can buy coverage for themselves — with state taxpayers picking up roughly 72 percent of the cost — they can get it for their families. That’s even more unusual.
Perhaps that explains some of their misconceptions about health care.
Lawmakers had the chance to cover about 35,000 working parents at no cost to state taxpayers. Hospitals volunteered to provide $52.5 million to the state from federal money they already receive to care for the uninsured. Their payments would have triggered $93 million in federal matching payments.
But Republican legislators balked at helping poor working parents. They killed the deal.
Now that the legislative session has ended, it’s worth separating the wheat of health insurance reality from the chaff of political ideology.
Lawmakers seem to think that health insurance is easy to obtain and affordable. It is for them. It’s not for the rest of us.
Legislators, of course, have government jobs. That’s a good thing when it comes to getting health coverage. About 97 percent of Americans who work for state and local governments are offered health insurance.
But only 58 percent of those who work in service industries and just 40 percent of people who work in retail get health benefits.
In other words, plenty of Missourians work full-time hours but can’t get health insurance at work and can’t afford to buy it on their own.
Break out the low-income group who are most likely to be uninsured — those earning less than about twice the federal poverty level, or about $36,620, for a family of three — and the trends are discouraging. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of low-income workers offered health insurance at work fell from 65 percent to just 58 percent. The number that actually could afford to buy the coverage that was offered fell from 53 percent to 41 percent.
House Budget Committee Chairman Allen Icet, R-Wildwood, balked at the idea of covering “able-bodied adults.” Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, who wrote a Republican alternative health plan, referred to “what I guess you would call the working poor.”
“Able-bodied working poor” is a good summary of who makes up the uninsured. What’s wrong is that able-bodied people who are willing to work still can’t get health insurance, and it’s through no fault of their own.
In Missouri, a single mother struggling to raise two children on $3,800 a year — a little over 20 percent of the poverty level — would be considered too wealthy for Medicaid. The Legislature was asked to raise that to about half the poverty level, or about $9,000 a year for a mother with two children.
Too expensive, said the GOP lawmakers.
They, and the rest of the uninsured, will have to wait until they’re sick enough to go to hospital emergency rooms. The unreimbursed costs of their care will be passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher insurance rates. That’s why Mr. Nixon’s plan made sense: Cover 35,000 of them up front and you reduce costs for everyone.
Mr. Nixon should call the lawmakers back into session. Show them big charts with easy-to-understand numbers. Make it clear that by failing to address the problem of the uninsured in Missouri, lawmakers have made a miserable situation even worse.
Here we go again with the lie that “Lawmakers had the chance to cover about 35,000 working parents at no cost to state taxpayers.” News flash: That $93 million in federal money comes from taxpayers too.
PS - Since you made this same statement a few days ago, and I made the same comment, it obviously didn’t motivate you to choose more accurate language. So, for your next editorial on this topic, which is surely coming soon, let me suggest a few phrases which would convey the situation more precisely:
“without additional appropriation of state funds.”
“at no additional cost to state government.”
Or, the most precise of all:
“with all additional costs paid with federal and private funds.”
A few thoughts:
-MO HealthNet for Kids (Medicaid combined with the CHIP program) fully covers all children in families making up to 150 percent of the poverty level, and coverage can be obtained on children between 150 and 300 percent with a monthly premium.
-$3,800 a year works out to $73 and change per week…or right at about 10 hours a week of work for a minimum-wage worker. Raise it to $9000, and you’re in the 23 hours of work/week range. I worked longer hours than that when I was 16. At the very least, why not acknowledge that private business owners shouldn’t be forced to cover someone who works that little?
-On the little dig at lawmakers, perhaps you could do a study and find out which lawmakers have coverage through the legislature and which ones don’t…or, at the very least, the percentage of legislators who use the state insurance. I’ll give you a head-start: I know at least 5 legislators off the top of my head that use other health insurance, and I’m not even trying. Your turn-GO!
Where’s the daddy to those children of that now infamous single mother? Every single argument uses the same single mother of two. Some single mother of two should trademark that phrase and charge each time it’s uttered. They wouldn’t struggle any longer.
SMC,
You’re obviously not a long time reader. Here are links to some of my previous work on the subject you mention:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3sxcxx_43dhb44j93
http://docs.google.com/Edit?id=dd3sxcxx_44cpg5vthr
Nick,
According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Missouri receives $1.32 in federal funding for every $1 in federal taxes it pays. That compares to the 61 cents New Jersey receives, the 79 centers New York gets and the 78 cents Californians get back. You can find a link here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
I’m sure your concern for the federal tax burden for residents of those states is appreciated. But frankly, Missouri needs the money and Missouri residents need the health coverage.
Nick - excellent comment. Unfortunate that it will fall on deaf ears with the PD Editorialists. They want you to pay more and more all the time to people that don’t feel like working hard enough to pay for their own insurance.
So why are we supporting the rich? Why should we care about paying them anything? Remember they got billions from the rest of us via deficit spending and outright take aways from the rest of us. It is high time we turned the tables and asked why should we support you. We do not want whatever it is you do. We are just forced to pay by that criminal organization the republican party. Remember we are in power and are going to start using it for ourselves just like you have in the past.
Here is a partial solution sure to be a hit with the “fiscal conservatives” in Jefferson City:
State law makers are covered for their health care at the state run health clinic to be built in or next to the capitol building for “free” for they and their families — but only while they are in session and only during their term of office. (I have a sneaking suspicion that “legislative sessions” will start lasting longer.)
Of course they are welcome to purchase health insurance in their beloved “free market” in between times and once they are out of office — just like everyone else.
I’ve got mine. To hell with the rest of you!