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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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State Rep. Jesse White
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To: Editor, PA Focus From: State Rep. Jesse White, D-Washington/Allegheny/Beaver
RE: PA ABC health-care proposal
Last week I had the opportunity to host the state
House Democratic Policy Committee in my district for a hearing on the
Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care legislation that we passed in March. We are
still waiting for the state Senate to act on this plan so it can be signed into
law.
The Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care proposal, or PA ABC, would expand access
to health-care coverage to hundreds of thousands of people statewide and make
it easier for people who couldn't afford coverage before to get health
insurance. This is NOT socialized medicine, and it's NOT a government-run
health-care system. It's about working with the private sector to simply make
health insurance affordable for people who need it.
The purpose of the hearing was to raise awareness of the need to expand health-care
coverage for Pennsylvanians who cannot afford their own insurance. For those of
you who don’t believe that there are people out there without health insurance,
the numbers are both staggering and impossible to ignore.
Most adults in Pennsylvania who do not have health insurance can apply for
adultBasic coverage, which is a limited-benefit health insurance program funded
through Pennsylvania’s settlement with the tobacco companies. The program
provides health-insurance coverage to uninsured Pennsylvania adults who meet
eligibility guidelines, and fall within adultBasic family size and income
guidelines. The cost for this coverage is $35 per month, per person.
A whopping 38 percent of my constituents in Washington, Allegheny and Beaver counties
between the ages of 19 and 64 are uninsured. In those three counties alone,
7,141 people are enrolled in the adultBasic program, while 10,285 people are on
the waiting list. Even if those people come off the waiting list and receive adultBasic
coverage, they still will not have access to prescription-drug coverage or
behavioral health benefits.
The majority of the people on the adultBasic waiting list are employed but
either can't afford health- care insurance or work for an employer who cannot
afford to provide it.
PA ABC is an innovative package of health-care
reforms that would improve the economic conditions of health-care providers,
reward small employers who offer health care to their employees and offer a
private-sector approach to providing an affordable health-care product to
uninsured and underinsured Pennsylvanians.
PA ABC will provide more than 270,000 uninsured working Pennsylvanians with access to basic health care. It will immediately provide affordable health insurance to the 80,000 Pennsylvanians who are on the adultBasic waiting list.
We will make $42 million available for grants
to small-business employers who have been doing the right thing all along by
providing health-care coverage to their employees.
We will assist doctors by continuing to help them pay their medical malpractice
insurance premiums. We will lower the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals,
which costs us $1.4 billion a year and adds hundreds of dollars to every
insurance premium, which will lower the cost of care for all Pennsylvanians.
Among the people who testified at the hearing was a woman from Burgettstown who
had recently been laid off from her job and could not afford health insurance
for her family. As she told her story, she broke down in tears. Afterwards, she
contacted me to apologize for being so emotional and I didn’t know what to say.
Here was this woman who was apologizing to me because she didn’t have health
insurance and felt bad because she was emotional about it.
According to a study done by Families USA, two Pennsylvanians die every day
from lack of health insurance, yet the state Senate stubbornly refuses to act
on the PA ABC plan the House passed six months ago. They’re the ones who should
be doing the apologizing, not the people who are victims of a broken system.
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