ConnPIRG advocates health reform

The reform of the health care industry is not only a popular topic in the Senate, it is also the foundation of UConnPIRG's "Making Health Care Work" campaign this semester.

There are currently 46 million Americans who do not have health insurance, according to ConnPIRG campus organizer Kevin Maggio. Without reform, one in four dollars in the United States will be tied into the health care system by 2025.

"We really think this is a major issue that needs to be dealt with," Maggio said.

ConnPIRG is currently focusing its efforts on gaining support from Sen. Joe Lieberman after Sen. Chris Dodd offered strong support for health care reform. After announcing in August that he had been diagnosed with an early stage of prostate cancer, Dodd said that he hoped a bill would pass in the Senate so that every American could have an annual physical and become aware of any health issues in the early stages.

Lieberman "hasn't really dipped into it all that much," Maggio said about the senator's stance on health care reform. Therefore, UConnPIRG has been making phone calls to Lieberman's office and sending handwritten letters asking him to support the bills that will lead to reform.

Besides urging the senator to take action, ConnPIRG recently released a report called "Small Businesses at Risk: How Entrepreneurs Slip Through the Health Care System's Cracks." The report examines several ways that the current health care system fails small businesses. These factors included the rising cost of health care, the decline in coverage that small businesses can offer, the problems of attracting and retaining good employees, the low bargaining power the businesses possess and the problems they face when an employee gets sick.

According to the report, the cost of annual premiums for family coverage of small business employees has increased at a rate of 12 percent per year since 1999. Conversely, the median family income rose only 29 percent over the whole decade. Furthermore, the businesses have few options for providing coverage, and the few they have are not good, Maggio said. This is combined with the fact that many insurance companies hike premiums or drop coverage when an employee has a pre-existing condition or gets sick.

"Something as simple as asthma can get you refused coverage," said Maggio.

To publicize their report, ConnPIRG held a press conference on Oct. 8 at Woody's Hot Dogs in downtown Hartford. The purpose of the event, according to Maggio, was to highlight the cost of health care by demonstrating that if Woody's operated like the current health care system, it would become bankrupt almost immediately.

"We were playing a little game with the health care industry," said Maggio. "We wanted to poke fun at the specialization."

The idea was that the event would show the inefficiency of the specialization that occurs when patients are sent to multiple doctors and specialists.

The accompanying disorganization is another aspect of the industry that would be improved if a public health care option were included in a reform bill, said Maggio.

"A huge amount of health care costs are wasted on administrative inefficiencies," he said. A public option would include improvements such as the digitalization of records, and would provide a low-cost plan for the uninsured with which private insurance companies would have to compete for customers.