The Uninsured Face An Uphill Battle

As health care rates skyrocket and comprehensive health care proves more elusive, many Queens residents are going without insurance coverage.
“I think that it puts a real burden and strain on the health care system when we have the number of uninsured that we do,” said Michael Fagan, a spokesperson for Mary Immaculate Hospital. According to Fagan, close to 40 percent of Mary Immaculate’s patients are uninsured. “They come to our hospital for care and often don’t have the resources [to pay]. Many times the care we provide is not reimbursed.”
In a recent article by Dr. Jon R. Cohen, chief medical officer of North Shore-LIJ Medical Center, there are three million uninsured in New York — 75% of them middle-class working people with no access to affordable insurance.
The result is a trickle-down effect. The uninsured often wait longer to receive care. By postponing treatment, a pre-existing condition may become worse, thereby requiring more extensive and aggressive courses of action. This in turn drives up costs for hospitals, and, later, insurance companies and other patients.
“We must treat them [the uninsured] before the conditions become acute,” said Elmhurst Hospital spokesman Dario Centorcelli. “This makes sense for the patient and fiscally.”
With an emphasis on preventative measures to keep health care costs low, Cohen suggested in his piece that basic health insurance be made affordable to small businesses and to “make it easier for the one million uninsured who already qualify for a state insurance program to use the system.”
It seems that at Elmhurst Hospital, these and other methods are working. Statistically, in the last quarter of 2004, 95% of pediatric patients were insured, while 75% of medical primary care (adult) patients had health coverage.
“We are very driven,” said Evelyn Luciano, Senior Associate Director for Ambulatory Care at Elmhurst. “Instead of waiting for patients to come to us, we go to them.”
In addition to increasing accessibility to health care coverage, Elmhurst also runs the Prenatal Care Assistance Program (PCAP) — for which women need not be U.S. citizens or even have a U.S. residence — and has a partnership with Queens libraries through which informational sessions entitled “How Can I See the Doctor If I Don’t Have Health Insurance?” are given.
But still the problem persists.
“If everyone had health insurance it would equalize people’s access to care,” said Fagan.
Centorcelli echoed this.
“Legislators have to realize that these people are present,” he said.
toni@queenscourier.com