Income's not only impediment to health coverage, panel hears
By BENITA D. NEWTON
Published November 18, 2003
TAMPA - Jacqui Knight's leg was pinned by a garbage can filled with 400 pounds of concrete and tile, and her biggest worry was how she would pay for medical care if her leg was crushed.
Despite an annual income of $60,000 as a self-employed consultant for a Tampa company that provides health care assistance, Knight has no medical insurance.
She says she can't consistently afford $500 a month in premiums on top of a mortgage, car payment and other expenses. Knight works for We Care Home Service Inc., which offers health care assistance to uninsured, low-income families.
"Affordability is as subjective as emotions," said Knight, who escaped serious injury when friends pulled the heavy garbage can off of her six weeks ago. "Unless food, electricity and a phone are luxuries, I simply cannot afford to pay these premiums."
Knight was among dozens of speakers who each took advantage of a three-minute window Monday to tell the Governor's Task Force on Access to Affordable Health Insurance what they thought was needed to help more people get quality health care. The meeting was held in Tampa and led by Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings and state chief financial officer Tom Gallagher. The task force plans to present its findings and recommendations to the state Legislature by Feb. 15, after a series of public meetings throughout the state.
With federal and state programs such as Medicaid offering help for the poorest of Americans, the focus was on the working poor and the middle class, including the self-employed.
Elliot Wicks, a senior consultant with Health Management Associates, of Michigan, indicated that a third of the uninsured in the nation make more than $50,000 a year. He said they choose not to insure themselves.
"They can afford it, but for whatever reason, they choose not to buy insurance," Wicks said.
The speakers offered many reasons for why they don't. Among those at the hearing was an underinsured accountant who ended up $100,000 in debt after his wife fell ill last year, a representative of TECO Energy who said providing benefits to the company's 70,000 employees and retirees would consume an additional 12 to 15 percent of its budget, and the owner of a small business who pays $700 a month for "bare bones" insurance for her family and is beginning to wonder whether she should have moved from New York to Florida at all.
"We didn't have these sort of problems in New York," said Joyce Smith, who runs a shipping company in Tampa. "Three of our insurance companies have gone bust. I don't go to the doctor. It's too expensive. Health care has become a luxury."
Ronna Metcalf, executive director of the Life Enrichment Center, a Tampa nonprofit organization for active seniors, said her agency recently received a 40 percent increase in its premiums, bringing the cost to provide insurance to its two paid staff members to $7,000 a year, 6 percent of the group's annual budget.
"It's a national disgrace," Metcalf said. "If we go out of business, someone else will have to pick this service up."
