9% of Harrisburg-area residents have no health insurance :DIANA FISHLOCK
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-10-05 00:25:07 | Word Count: 510
A year ago, 100,000 people were on the waiting list for Pennsylvania’s state-funded adultBasic health insurance. The number has tripled since last September, said a Pennsylvania Insurance Department spokeswoman.
“Things are continuing to worsen when it comes to insurance and access to health care,” said Insurance Department spokeswoman Rosanne Placey.
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As bad as things are here, Pennsylvania fares much better than the country as a whole, according to data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Nationally, 15 percent of residents — 46 million Americans — were without health insurance in 2008. In Pennsylvania — and in most of the midstate — about 9 percent were uninsured. The census data released this week offers the agency’s first look at the uninsured at the state and local level. While Pennsylvania fares better than other states, more than 1 million people in the Keystone State are uninsured.
“Where we do relatively well in is providing insurance to children. The Children’s Health Insurance Program has both state and federal funding,” Placey said. The CHIP program insures 195,932 Pennsylvania children; that program receives federal aid. The adultBasic program insures only 45,000 adults with the waiting list of 300,000 because it receives only state funding, Placey said.
According to a recent state Insurance Department survey, about 91 percent of those with private insurance secured it through their employer. When people lose work, they are losing their insurance. “People are currently being laid off. Employers are closing their doors, so that leaves people who are used to fairly generous benefits now with fairly limited options,” Placey said.
The effects are far reaching.
Midstate hospitals are seeing an increase in emergency room visits and in the number of people who can’t pay medical bills. So hospitals are facing higher costs and providing more free care.
“This is a tough time and it’s difficult for people to know where to go when they don’t have insurance,” said Lisa Henry, director of marketing at PinnacleHealth Systems.
People put off spending money on their health, but sometimes end up spending much more and becoming much sicker by waiting, she said. People who can’t pay for a $10 flu shot may end up needing thousands of dollars in emergency room care, for example.
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center also is offering more charity care as it sees more patients who are uninsured or underinsured, said Troy Phillips, the director of patient financial services at the medical center.
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