University student Meika Hopps was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease during her sophomore year, and as a result she experienced firsthand the faults of the healthcare system. The Oregon Health Plan program only financially assisted those with cervical or breast cancer. After being denied coverage by more services, including Social Security Disability Insurance, Hopps finally found what she called a “phenomenal” program at Sacred Heart Medical Center that supplied total coverage.
Hopps described her efforts at finding care as “a full-time job. It’s a lot of work.”
Hopps is a success story, but there are literally millions who aren’t so lucky. The long and enduring path of tribulations that Hopps underwent before finding care is just one example of the overall healthcare issue facing America today.
The Allen Hall Public Relations group collaborated with Community Health Centers of Lane County to bring a four-person panel discussion to the Lillis Business Complex on Tuesday night. The panel consisted of political activists who stressed the need to make an immediate change in the healthcare system that would make it more affordable for the 60,000 people in Lane County and the millions around the country who are without health insurance.
Bruce Mulligan carried on the discussion with reasons for the failure of the healthcare system as well as statistics illustrating the poor state that America’s uninsured are in.
Mulligan, a 30-year veteran in the healthcare business and a leader of the healthcare activist group We Can Do Better, wants to use “Oregon as a lever of the movement” to improve the system’s affordability.
He noted that young adults make up the most steadily increasing group of uninsured Americans. The $65 trillion healthcare deficit, Mulligan says, is a result of an “erosion of employment-based healthcare” and the “aging population” of the United States. The baby boomers are now reaching the Medicare age group bracket, which only gouges the deficit even deeper. Mulligan is concerned that younger Americans are the ones who will be left with a problem that was left unsolved by their parents and the generation before them.
Dr. Loren Barlow, the medical director for PeaceHealth and Sacred Heart, followed Mulligan with his own take on what has gone awry in healthcare.
One reason that Barlow cites: “Nobody has quite had the political courage to do anything about it.”
He did mention, however, that local political efforts have been attempted in states like Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon. Barlow and Mulligan agreed that public dollars need to be allocated more toward healthcare.
Selene Jaramillo, who represented Cover The Uninsured Week and Community Health Centers of Lane County, concluded the panel discussion.
She said that local community health centers are “most successful with physical health,” but admitted that both mental and dental health coverage are lacking.
Even local Eugene/Springfield community centers can only help about one-fifth of the total uninsured in Lane County, Jaramillo said. She expressed that “health care is a privilege in this country. It needs to be treated as a basic human right.”
The panelists listed some ways that students can make a positive imprint. The most basic may be establishing a relationship with health centers. Patients usually rely on centers for emergency situations and Jaramillo says that more well-known patients have priority. Individuals can make substantial changes collectively, according to the panel. One way is through support of Oregon Senate Bills 27 and 329, which are both designed to increase insurance access and affordability, Mulligan said.
These bills could spark a real improvement in an American healthcare system that runs at double the cost of “20 or so other westernized nations,” Mulligan said.