Today's White House health summit should prove an important landmark in the health reform process. I'll be heading over there in about half an hour. But the final outcome of health reform will be less about Beltway moments like today's event and more about the pressure applied by stories like the one Karen Tumulty tells on this week's cover of Time magazine. Karen -- a bone fide health care wonk -- writes of the trouble she's had navigating the insurance market with her brother, who was recently diagnosed with kidney failure. And the trouble is not because he didn't have health coverage and it's not because Karen doesn't know how to speak to an insurance representative or read the policy details. The trouble, in other words, is not for the 15 percent of Americans who are uninsured. It's for the 85 percent who have health care coverage.
But falling ill without adequate insurance leaves you at risk no matter where you live. Since 2005, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has maintained a national call center for cancer patients struggling with their bills. In that time, more than 21,000 people have called in asking for help. Every story is different, but the contours of the problem tend to be depressingly similar: the 10-year-old leukemia patient in Ohio who, after three rounds of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant, had almost exhausted the maximum $1.5 million lifetime benefit allowed under her father's employer-provided plan; the Connecticut grocery-store worker who put off the radiation treatments for her Stage 2 breast cancer because she had used up her company plan's $20,000 annual maximum and was $18,000 in debt; the New Hampshire accountant who, unable to work during his treatment for Stage 3B stomach cancer, had to stop paying his mortgage to afford a $1,120 monthly premium for coverage with the state's high-risk insurance pool. What makes these cases terrifying, in addition to heartbreaking, is that they reveal the hard truth about this country's health-care system: just about anyone could be one bad diagnosis away from financial ruin. Most people get their coverage where they work. But Anna McCourt, a supervisor at the ACS call center, says employees often have difficulty understanding the jargon in insurance policies. Even human-resources personnel may not fully understand all the intricacies of a policy when briefing a new employee. Coverage that seems generous when you are healthy — eight annual doctor visits or three radiation courses — quickly proves insufficient if you find yourself really sick.
Read the whole thing. Related: How to build a better insurance market.
