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With the national unemployment rate now at a 15 year high of 7.9% and experts projecting it will hit 9% later this year, it’s important to remember that all these people aren’t just losing a paycheck, they’re likely losing their health insurance too. With the declining economy and jobless rates steadily increasing, we can’t wait much longer before moving forward with making comprehensive, affordable health care available to all Americans. As President Obama said this week in his address to Congress, “we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold. We can't afford to do it. It's time.”
The high cost of health care for the nearly 46 million uninsured Americans is driving up insurance premiums for everyone else. A 2005 study found that if you’re lucky enough to have health care through your employer, your premium was $341 higher to cover the unreimbursed costs of health care for the uninsured. And that was before the latest job losses. The U.S. puts more of its GDP towards health care than any other country – and this massive spending puts a strain on employers. This year, U.S. businesses saw their insurance premiums increase by almost 6%. With those kinds of numbers, is it any wonder that so much research shows that the high cost of health insurance is the number one reason people are uninsured?
When people lose their health care, they forgo important routine checkups and hold out as long as they can before having health problems checked out by a doctor. We can’t let the economic crisis keep people from seeking care when they really need it. Not only does putting off medical care make for bad health outcomes, it can be really expensive to take care of medical problems left undiagnosed and unattended for too long. We pay, for example, up to $8 billion a year to treat breast cancer that goes undetected for too long – but a routine mammogram, the best method we have to catch breast cancer in its earliest and most treatable form, costs as little as $50. As a state legislator in Illinois, I passed a measure that gave uninsured women over 40 access to routine breast and cervical cancer screenings. If elected to Congress, I want to give all Americans the access to life saving cancer screenings that women of Illinois now enjoy. It’s not just the right thing to do – it makes sound fiscal sense.
We’re starting to see how increased job loss has impacted American business, we don’t want to wait to see how it will hurt our nation’s health. We have to move forward in partnership with President Obama to make quality health care accessible to everyone. It’s time.
