House-passed health-care plan would help thousands in region
by state Rep. Tim Seip
The number of uninsured people continues to grow as the national economy slumps, prompting a serious crisis across the country. Pennsylvania is not immune: hundreds of thousands of working residents are currently without health-care insurance.
These aren’t the unemployed – these are people who work full time but can’t afford health coverage or are not offered coverage from their employers. People who obtain private coverage are spending a large part of their take-home income on premiums, and others are dropped from their plans or can’t obtain insurance because of a pre-existing medical condition.
To address these and other health-care issues, the state House of Representatives has passed a plan that would provide Pennsylvania citizens with affordable and accessible health-insurance coverage. Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care, or PA ABC for short, passed the House on March 17 with significant bipartisan support and is now before the state Senate.
This plan would provide the state’s working uninsured with access to basic care, including prescription drug benefits and preventive check-ups. The plan would also immediately provide affordable health insurance to the 80,000 Pennsylvanians who are on the state’s adultBasic waiting list – including 924 people in Schuylkill County and 2,750 people in Berks County.
In addition, PA ABC would make $42 million available for grants to small-business owners to help them defray the costs of providing health-care coverage for their employees and continue to help doctors pay their medical malpractice insurance premiums so we can retain our health-care professionals.
As a health-care professional, I have seen numerous times that when the uninsured need care, they tend to turn to emergency rooms. PA ABC would lower the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals, which currently reaches about $1.4 billion annually and adds hundreds of dollars to everyone’s insurance premiums.
April 27 through May 3 marks National Cover the Uninsured Week in the U.S. During this week, many diverse groups, from nonprofit organizations to physicians, will be working to spread awareness of the crisis faced by those without health-care insurance. Pennsylvania residents should participate in this dialogue by contacting their state senators and urging them to vote for PA ABC to give people access to basic, affordable health-care insurance.
State Rep. Tim Seip (www.pahouse.com/Seip) represents the 125th Legislative District in Schuylkill and Berks counties.