COVID-19 and America’s Social Safety Net

Friday’s HuffPost published an article by Emily Peck on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its impact on the country’s broken social safety net.

The article indicates that millions of working Americans do not get paid sick days. It also states that a stunning 70% of low-wage workers and one of three workers in the private sector, have no access to paid sick time.

According to Ms. Peck, the US is one of the few countries in the world without a national paid sick leave policy. In addition, she adds, millions of Americans do not have health insurance, or their policies are designed to keep them away from doctors with high co-payments and deductibles.

Both these issues, Ms. Peck writes, highlights how coronavirus, or COVID-19, could test the US’ uniquely weak social safety net.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the executive director of MomsRising, a nonprofit advocating for paid leave is quoted in the article, “Right now we’re looking at a situation where we have a lack of policies that most other countries take for granted that protect their public health.”

This isn’t just a “coronavirus” problem, Ms. Peck says. Even though the CDC warned Americans earlier in the week, so far there have been very few case reported in the US. (Note: As of this writing,  there have been 74 reported cases in the US, and two men have died in Washington State, and one case was recently reported in Rhode Island, and one in Manhattan)

Yet, fears of an outbreak has put a spotlight on the public health system. With cuts to many agencies by Trump, many experts fear that we will be unable to deal with the crisis, especially since the Trump called it a hoax at a recent political rally.

He also appointed his evolution-denying Vice President, Mike Pence to coordinate the Administration’s response after gagging several Administration personnel from appearing on the Sunday talk shows. It was mentioned after the announcement that Pence did not believe that smoking causes cancer when he was Governor of Indiana.

For the Democrats, says Ms. Peck, coronavirus makes the case for policies like universal health care and paid sick and family leave.

Some key points to consider:

First, flu rates are higher without sick leave. What about coronavirus?

In the US, the article reports, just 10 states, 20 cities and three counties have some kind of paid sick leave. This is compared with the rest of the world, where more than 145 countries have this benefit. People who live in those places, research shows, are less likely to get sick, Ms. Peck reports.

And lack of paid sick leave is certainly a “risk factor”, according to Nicolas Ziebarth, associate professor in health economics at Cornell. Professor Ziebarth’s 2019 paper in the Journal of Public Economics, looked at Google data on flu rates, compared cities with leave policies with those without, and found that flu rates were 5% lower in places with sick leave.

An upcoming paper of Professor Ziebarth’s, based on CDC data, has found that the rates are actually 11% lower.

For those workers in low-wage jobs, if they get sick, they cannot afford to take time off of work because they are barely getting by. So, they end up going to work, and they get their co-workers sick.

Working from home isn’t an option.

Many companies are telling employees to work from home with the threat from coronavirus. However, for low-wage hourly workers, says Ms. Peck, this just isn’t an option. Many work in industries that have contact with the community — such as food servers, people who care for children, clean offices and homes.

As stated above, it is not just sick leave, The US also lacks any kind of comprehensive paid family leave policy, according to Ms. Peck, which would enable workers to take time off to care for a close family member’s health issues. This issue first came to light in 1993 when Bill Clinton signed into law, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which required covered employers to provide employees with job-protected and unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons.

An example of just how needed is paid family leave, comes from the experience of Ericka Farrell, a mother of three in Maryland, who lost her temp job in the early 2000s because she had to take so much time off to care for her young son. She did not regret staying home, but now works with MomsRising to advocate for paid leave herself, writes Ms. Peck.

Millions are uninsured. Many more have terrible insurance.

According to Ms. Peck, even if you take time off when you are sick, you might not be able to afford to see the doctor. Slightly more than 10% of Americans. she mentions, or about 30 million people, don’t have health insurance. This is because their employers do not offer it, or it is too expensive.

Things to consider regarding the uninsured:

• Far less likely to go to the doctor
• Americans with insurance face obstacles to getting care due to high co-payments
• Then there are the deductibles, which have been going up for decades
• Most people haven’t come near clearing those deductibles at the beginning of the year

John Graves, associate professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center was quoted as saying, “If we as a society are going to face a spreading infectious disease, the worse time of the year is the beginning of the year.”

Graves added that the US health care system is simply not designed to deal with a potential pandemic.

First, he says, the US relies on employment-based insurance. If people are thrown out of work due to an economic downturn, they lose coverage.

Second, insurance is designed to encourage people not to see the doctor through so-called “cost-sharing.”  Co-payments and deductibles exist to discourage people from visiting the doctor or going to the hospital for every “cough and sniffle.” Graves said.

Lastly, in 2018, the Administration made it easier for people to buy insurance plans with less generous coverage, and don’t always cover expenses stemming from preexisting conditions, the article says. Experts have said that these plans they consider junk policies, have even higher out-of-pocket costs.

So what does this all mean?

It means that cuts to the social safety net guarantees that should the coronavirus get out of hand, the US is not prepared to deal with it effectively, and many more people will probably die who shouldn’t because of politics and ideology.

Hospital closings in rural areas, the firing of hundreds of health care personnel at the federal level, silencing the experts in infectious diseases, and the appointment of a man who rejects evolution and says smoking does not cause cancer to coordinate the Administration’s response, is a recipe for a catastrophe of unimanigable proportions. Calling it a hoax in front of your ardent supporters who believe everything you say, will only lead to more confusion and more deaths.

But this crisis also proves that it is high time those on social media sites like LinkedIn who are part of the health care industry, whether they are physicians, in the pharmaceutical industry, work in hospitals, are device manufacturers, or are consultants and researchers, accept the fact that single payer, universal health care (Medicare for All) is not just an economic necessity, but a public health necessity as well.

Is your big, fat five or six figure incomes more important than human health? It’s your call.

Another reason Single Payer is inevitable – Managed Care Matters

Once again, Joe Paduda has broken down why single payer is inevitable, and what will happen to millions if repeal of the ACA happens.

I won’t go over the reality of what the landscape would look like, because we have heard about it before, and does not bear repeating. However, what does need to be said is, repeal will lead to single payer, no matter what the medical-industrial complex says or does to stop it, and those who advocate an incremental approach, such as fixing ACA, or some other half Medicare measure, will eventually lose ground politically, especially those running for president.

And those of you who advocate for more competition and a truly free market in health care should pay attention to what Joe say about that.

Finally, check out the infographic at the bottom of the text. It is funny.

Here is Joe’s post:

Earlier this week President Trump called for the GOP to become “the Party of Great Healthcare.” He wants three Senators to come up with a “terrific, beautiful” healthcare plan. What Trump is actually doing is accelerating the day when Single … Continue reading Another reason Single Payer is inevitable

Source: Another reason Single Payer is inevitable – Managed Care Matters

Rural Hospitals to Fail If Medicaid Expansion Ends

In April of 2015, I wrote the following post, Hospital Closures Due to Failure to Expand Medicaid.

This morning, Health Affairs posted a brief, Ending Medicaid Expansion Would Cause Rural Hospitals to Go Under.

As the current regime in Washington, and its allies in Congress slowly dismantle the ACA, rolling back Medicaid expansion will lead to rural hospitals closing, and rural patients being forced to travel long distances to get to a hospital, or to forgo medical at all.

What impact this will have on the entire health care sector is too early to tell, and what this may mean for workers’ comp, is also speculative, but it can’t be good if hospitals in the heartland go out of business.

Some way to make America great again. On the backs of, and on the health of, rural Americans who voted for this clown.

The End of the World Is Near (The Health Care World, That Is)

Fellow blogger, Joe Paduda, brilliantly summed up the current GOP attempt to blow up the nation’s health care system in today’s post.

Rather, than repeat and comment on what he wrote, I am letting you read the post here.

Then there is a great graphic on what the Cassidy-Graham bill will mean for states, and from a brief look at it, I can say that they are playing favorites with some, but not all of the states of the former Confederacy, and sticking it to those states in the North (and West like California) who they have disdain for.

Because of it’s dire impact on the health care system, it should actually be called the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid bill, because like those two 19th century bandits, they are going to rob us blind. How do you say “We are taking back your health care” in Spanish?

But, in actuality, it is just another way of giving a tax break to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

If this bill passes, and the Orangutan signs it, the end of the world in health care would soon follow. The only option then would be single-payer, and it would be ironic and even cruel if that was the GOP’s game plan all along. Wreck the health care system so that single-payer is the only option left, and if that fails, they drop the whole thing and move on.

We shall see next week, as there are two Senators who may hold the future of health care in their hands, Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska.

Trump and the Social Determinants of Health

Here’s a little light reading for your weekend, courtesy of Patricia Illingworth, writing today in Health Affairs blog about the Social Determinants of Health and the take on it by the current administration.

Ms. Illingworth rightly points out that those below the poverty level and without a college degree, both whites and minorities, suffer more serious illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, heart disease, as well as smoking, drinking and using illegal drugs more than those with college degrees.

She also states that cuts to education, energy, the environment, housing and urban development, among other social sectors, impacts health, and that if these social determinants are underfunded, people will need more health care. And now that the health care reform debate is stalled, the current POTUS is still trying to destroy the ACA, and has threatened members of his own party, including the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell.

Ms. Illingworth cites a study published by the Brookings Institution, that showed that “deaths of despair”—those associated with drugs, alcohol, and suicide—have risen significantly among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans without a college degree.

Living conditions, Ms. Illingworth reports, also affects rates of asthma, which are the leading cause of children’s visits to ER’s, hospitalizations, and absenteeism. And, it is more prevalent in poor and minority communities.

All of this is not surprising, since 1980, this nation has waged a relentless war against its poor and minority citizens. This war began the day Ronald Reagan took the oath of office and began dismantling not only the New Deal programs, but cutting back the programs created under the Great Society of the 1960’s.

With each successive Republican administration, as well as the rise of Republican power  in Congress since the ascension of Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House, and in many states, especially in the formerly solid Democratic South, poverty and illness among the poor and minority, as well as whites have increased. And the loss of manufacturing and other support services jobs associated with manufacturing have resulted in the current opioid crisis, which only yesterday was addressed as a national emergency by the POTUS.

But Democrats are not without fault here too. Failure to stand up to the Reaganite Counter-Revolution, the pursuit of a failed “free trade” policy that has outsourced jobs or allowed companies to offshore jobs, as well as paying deference to the will of Wall Street and Corporate America, has brought us the current occupant of the Oval Office.

In the recent health care debate in Washington, many placed their confidence in moderate Republican senators to defeat the repeal and replace measures, but as Andrew Sullivan wrote four years ago in his blog, The Dish, “What Moderate Republicans?”, Sullivan says the following:

“There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching Fox. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy.”

The current architect of this destruction is not the man with the orange hair, but one Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart. Bannon’s radical agenda is to destroy the “deep state”, and to create what Sullivan so rightly predicted four years ago, as he said above.

Bannon has been identified as a racist, anti-Semite, and has no business in the White House. Another member of this cabal is Stephen Miller, who a few weeks ago, revealed his true colors by openly defending restricting legal immigration, something that brought his family, and mine, as well as millions of others, to this country.

I could go on, but this post is about health care.

The main point is, we need to stop playing games with people’s health and do what other Western and developed countries provide to their citizens, health care for all.

If you don’t believe me, then maybe the words of a billionaire will convince you. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in America, and an astute and very successful businessman, unlike a certain neophyte politician, has said the following with regard to single payer.

“…government-run health insurance “probably is the best system” because it would control escalating costs. We are such a rich country. In a sense, we can afford to do it, … In almost every field of American business, it pays to bring down costs.”

It is time to give every American health care. Then we will see a vast improvement in the social determinants of health.

Now It’s Personal

Last week, some of my LinkedIn connections, as well as several other connections, learned of my recent hospitalization. The reason for this was not mentioned at the time, but I will tell you now.

Not having health insurance through an employer, and being denied renewal of a local county health care program, led to my going from Stage 4 to End Stage Kidney Disease.

The hospitalization last week was to place a catheter in me for peritoneal dialysis, and to repair an umbilical hernia.

My hospitalization was brought to light quite unexpectedly by my friend, Maria Todd. Maria’s sending best wishes for my speedy recovery and quick discharge from the hospital was much appreciated, and the warm words by others in response, and the thirty plus “likes” made me feel that people cared. For that. I am grateful.

But the events of the past month have brought home to me one very important point, given the current activity surrounding the so-called “repeal and replace” of the ACA, and the two Congressional bills that many consider doing more harm than good.

This nation needs Medicare for All.

There, I said it.

I know in the past, I have advocated single payer for others, but my illness has shown that anyone who loses health care for any amount of time, once they have reached adulthood, cannot go without health insurance.

This is what happens when men and women are removed prematurely from the workforce, for whatever reason, employer decides you are no longer wanted, economic downturn or just to eliminate positions that affect the bottom-line of the company, and are generally targeted to individuals in their 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s so that the company can save on health care costs for those employees, and so that younger workers can be hired to replace them.

This is not something new, and not related to automation and artificial intelligence disrupting whole industries, which is inevitable.

My initial view on single-payer was that if employers were no longer responsible for the health insurance of their employees, and they were guaranteed full coverage by the government, some of the job losses of the past decades would not have happened, and many talented men and women out of the workforce would be employed until their retirement.

If you don’t believe me, go to LinkedIn and read the many posts from such individuals who are still unemployed. One fellow in Texas even got turned down from jobs at fast food restaurants.

So, now it is personal for me.

I also know that many of you make your living from the health care system we currently have, and that some of you have expounded on why you think a single payer system is unrealistic.

I get it that your financial outlook depends on working in a broken, free-market system because it pays your salary, but healthcare was not supposed to be a business, nor was it supposed to marketed like any other commodity.

If you don’t believe me, read what Pope Francis said: “health is not a consumer good, but rather a universal right, and therefore access to health care services cannot be a privilege.”

But try telling that to Messrs. McConnell, Ryan, Paul, et al in Congress, and the current POTUS, all of whom want to eliminate medical coverage for millions of Americans they received under the ACA, cut back Medicare and Medicaid, and destroy Social Security.

Now that I will be receiving dialysis, and quite likely will qualify for disability, the prospect of not having those resources is very personal to me, and could literally mean my life.

Look in the mirror, then look at your spouse, your children, your parents, your neighbors, friends, etc. What do you think would happen to them if these programs were eliminated? Would you have enough money to care for them? Would you have money to pay for private insurance?

I lost my mother last month to dementia. She died on her 85^th birthday in a nursing home some miles from my home (the home she and my father bought), but if the Republicans in Congress had gotten their way, and she had lived longer, I feared she would have been forced out of that nursing home, with no place to go, and would have been an even bigger burden to me.

So, I really don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Socialist, Liberal, or Conservative, we all need health care at some point in our lives.

One of the friends I met here in Florida back in the 90’s died last July of a stroke. He was 73. He worked out, never smoked, had a good life, three kids, and like many of you, worked in Risk Management, as well as Human Resources, the legal profession, and served in Vietnam. But despite all that, he died prematurely, and went into involuntary retirement because he was in his 60’s. Luckily, his wife worked. But you get the picture.

We must all do our part to see that every American can get health care. Not just access to care, which is a Republican euphemism for being able to afford it, and if you can’t, too bad. But actual health insurance. Medicare for All.

Trumpcare and Medical Travel: What Will Happen

The following infographic shows what will happen to the US healthcare system when the Senate rams the ACHA down our throats, as many are indicating will occur because McConnell and a group of GOP Men are hiding behind closed doors and won’t even tell their own party what’s in the bill they are writing.

What this will mean for medical travel is not hard to figure out. For some, it will offer an opportunity to seek lower cost medical care due to premiums that will increase and costs rising as well.

This will be especially true for self-insured employers who will want to save money by offering this to their employees.

Here is the infographic: