Healthcare In Crisis: COBRA crisis shows need for comprehensive health care reform

Thursday, January 22, 2009

COBRA crisis shows need for comprehensive health care reform

Rising unemployment amid the ongoing deep recession have further illuminated the folly of tying health-insurance coverage to employment. It doesn’t work for employees, the health care system itself, or taxpayers.

Congress actually recognized an inherent peril of employment-related health insurance back in 1986, when it passed the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, a cumbersome title that makes for a convenient acronym — COBRA.

The law allows laid-off workers to continue purchasing their work-related health insurance at the former employer’s group rate.

Last week, on the same day that the Labor Department announced a national 7.2 percent unemployment rate, a study was released by Families USA demonstrating the inadequacy of COBRA.

The study found that nationally, monthly unemployment compensation benefits average $1,278 while the average COBRA health coverage premium for a family of four is $1,069. In other words, the COBRA “benefit” consumes 83.6 percent of the unemployment compensation.

In Virginia, COBRA consumes more than 75 percent of monthly unemployment compensation.

COBRA always was meant to be temporary, a stop-gap. But the problem isn’t COBRA. It’s the vast, convoluted, broken state of U.S. health care. COBRA’s inadequacy is just another in a series of cries for Congress to ensure the broadest possible access to health care as an aspect of citizenship rather than employment.

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Statistics Collection

80 percent of the hospital closures nationwide occured in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. 2019
About 75,000 patients with hospital-related infections died in 2011.
A recent study conducted by the Kresge Foundation and published in Health Affairs found that treating children who are exposed to air pollution, toxic chemicals and other pollutants costs a staggering $76.6 billion dollars a year. The study also found that children with existing allergies to common airborne allergens are even more vulnerable to chemical pollutants than others.
About 27.8 million people without coverage are working, either part or full time.
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86.7 million Americans were uninsured at some point in 2007 and 2008.
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Health care continued to take up a greater share of the economy in 2007, as spending on hospitals, doctors and other services increased 6.1 percent to $2.2 trillion.
Several major U.S. insurance companies, like Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina and southern California are now considering sending patients overseas for surgeries. (5/07)
Experts predict that the medical tourism industry will grow to $40 billion by 2010.
An estimated 500,000 Americans travel out of the U.S. every year for some type of medical care. Care they can't afford here.
rising costs and deteriorating coverage cause more than one-in-four (28 percent) to go without needed care because they can't afford it.
In 2007, 75 million working-age adults were either uninsured or underinsured, up from 61 million in 2003.
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Roughly one-half of America's hospitals operating in the red
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The American Hospital Association, which represents 5,000 hospitals and health care systems, spent $7.3 million in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form.
Record numbers of Americans are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the American healthcare system – with 100,000 patients expected to fly out this year for cosmetic surgery alone
Half the nation's 47 million uninsured workers are employed by small businesses.
47 million uninsured in 2006 up from 44.8 million uninsured in 2005. 17.1 million people under age 65 were underinsured in 2003, including 9.3 million people with employer-based insurance.
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15.8% of Americans are uninsured, that's one in 6.
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From 2003-2005 there were 247,662 potentially preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals.
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