Health-care Costs Make Wisconsin Voters Ill
How would you describe the nation's quandary over skyrocketing health-care costs? Is it on life support? Is it a chronic condition with a poor prognosis?
Call it what you want, but the growing price of health care is a top area of concern for Wisconsinites, a recent Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Inc.-commissioned survey suggests, and voters this fall are looking to the slate of federal and state political candidates for symptom relief, if not for an all-out cure.
"In the past, access to health care has been an issue and that's how we got Medicare, but now for the first time we're hearing cost is an issue as well," said Thomas Schlesinger, who works for the La Crosse-based Gundersen Lutheran health-care system and has a doctoral degree in political science specializing in health-care policy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Premiums are rising at sky-high rates. Employers are ratcheting down or dropping benefits. Folks are digging deeper in their pockets for coverage or else taking a risk and going without it.
Ann Wolfgram, 54, of Green Bay is a certified public accountant with a master's degree in business administration, but her schooling and work experience couldn't prevent her or her retired husband from losing their health insurance after her employer downsized in 2002, putting her out of work in March of that year.
A quick sift through tax records reveals how much the Wolfgrams spent last year on health care - $11,869, more than one-fifth of their adjusted gross income.
That includes nine months of temporary coverage under her former employer, a two-month gap with no insurance and one month under benefits that Wolfgram still has today as a part-time administrative assistant for her church pastor.
The plan includes no dental or vision, and it costs about $150 more a month than Wolfgram actually earns on the job. Meanwhile, she's worked full time since January for a small CPA firm that she says just can't afford to provide its workers with health-care benefits.
Wolfgram's husband, Bob, a retired stockbroker, has worked part time to supplement the couple's income.
"What really kills me is you pay exorbitant fees, and you go to the doctor thinking you'll get excellent care, and you're not," Wolfgram said. "My doctor says, 'I can't treat you the way I want, because I can't prescribe this or that medication.' The insurance companies won't cover them. They think they're unnecessary."
The Wolfgrams, though in a tough situation, are better off than thousands of Wisconsinites who've permanently lost - or never had - health insurance in recent years.
About 593,000 of the state's 5.4 million people had no health insurance last year, up from the 406,000 who had no coverage in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
For those who do have coverage, the price remains high. Nationally, growth in premiums for family coverage under job-sponsored insurance has far outpaced increases in inflation and employee earnings, according to a national employer survey by the Kaiser Family
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