Consumer Law In the News

Working Families: Welcome to Your Health Care Crisis

This article from The Washington Post illustrates the pressure cooker that the combination of insurance restrictions, middle class economic pressure, and restrictions on social benefits programs have placed American working families in, and they’re slowly simmering away. We all know what happens to pressure cookers left too long to stew, right?

The article starts by introducing us to Everywoman - Cindy Holland, from North California, in this case. Her husband’s a full-time paramedic whose benefits program doesn’t extend insurance to family members, so she and the three kids go without coverage. They don’t qualify for public insurance; and they make too little to afford private policies, so … what’s going to happen when one of the children or Cindy becomes ill and requires ongoing medical care?

This really isn’t a trick question, yet our policy wonks and legislators seem convinced that it is. Something needs to be done.

While many industrialized countries provide care for all,
the United States covers only the elderly and the poor. Some 45
million, or 15 percent, of people in the world’s richest nation
lacked health insurance in 2005, up 3 percent on the previous
year. That number is widely believed to be higher today as
healthcare costs skyrocket, employers slash worker benefits and
insurers gut coverage and cherry-pick the healthiest customers.

Technorati Tags: health care crisis, insurance coverage

Powered by ScribeFire.

© 2007 SC Bankruptcy & Consumer Law Blog.