Avoiding Health Insurance ‘Death Spiral’ is Key, Carleton Speakers Say
BY JULIA OLSON
A recent talk on health care at Carleton College began with members of the audience, mostly students, telling the group why they had come.
Nearly every student said they felt under-informed about the present national debate on health care reform.
One of the two speakers at the event, Angelica Koch, offered reassurance.
“You’re not alone, and it isn’t that you aren’t trying,” said Koch, director of HealthFinders Collaborative, a free clinic in Northfield. “It’s an ever-changing issue.”
Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, a Carleton anthropology professor, also spoke at the Nov. 3 talk, called “Humanizing Healthcare,” sponsored by Carleton’s MPIRG.
Feldman-Savelsberg offered an example that brought the issue home to the students. She did so by first introducing the concept of a health insurance “death spiral,” in which small lapses in coverage snowball into emergencies.
For example, a man has no dental care, so his teeth suffer. As a result, his looks decline, making it difficult to get a job where he meets people in public. As a result, he can’t make money and can’t afford health insurance.
College Grads
Recent college graduates are among those at highest risk of falling into such a downward spiral, Feldman-Savelsberg said, because they may no longer be covered by their parents’ family health insurance policies.
“A little fall can quickly become a very big deal” under those circumstances, she said.
Becoming a caregiver of a sick person also puts a person at risk of entering a death spiral, because caregiving often entails giving up a job to care for a loved one.
“It’s important to realize that many people just down the street are in that crisis mode,” Feldman-Savelsberg said. The death spiral is described in a book she recommended to the group, “Uninsured America” by Susan Starr Sered.
HealthFinders Collaborative is designed to help people in just such tough spots, Koch said. The clinic offers free medical service to people who live within the clinic’s service zone, and also meet the required level of financial need.
“There has been an increase in returning patients, and many more recurring appointments” in recent months, Koch said.
Accessible Care
Sometimes people leave Northfield looking for a job elsewhere, but return in six months because they haven’t found one and need medical attention, she said.
“In an ideal world we would have a healthcare system where medical care is accessible to anyone, citizen or non-citizen,” Koch said.
In her opinion, such medical service doesn’t always need to be free, but can also be offered on a “pay what you can” basis.
“A good percent of these patients have the ability to pay something, and they want to, to have some accountability to their name,” Koch said.
Paying what they can afford gives patients a sense of dignity, she said.
“In order for something to be sustainable and successful, people need to have a stake in it. People need to feel involved,” Koch said.
To contact the author: olsonj@carleton.edu
Copyright @ 2009 Pressville
yeah,Sometimes people leave Northfield looking for a job elsewhere, but return in six months because they haven’t found one and need medical attention.