As the uninsured crisis worsens, publicly
owned health facilities are treading rough
water. Nurses prepare to do battle to
keep public hospitals and clinics available
as many patients' last and only option.
MENDING THE
NET
hat happens when you're uninsured
JONATHAN EVANS/GETTY IMAGES
W
and have a hacking cough that's lingered for three
months? Or a toddler who's been running a 102 degree
fever for two nights? For the vast majority of people
without health insurance, the answer is nothing. You wait and hope you
get better, and in the meantime treat yourself and your family with as
much cough syrup and baby aspirin as you can afford.
When you really start to get scared, you'll probably turn to your only
option: your local public health system.
For patients with no doctor or insurance card to call their own, county emergency rooms and local walk-in clinics act as safety nets that catch
the neediest among us, and are increasingly treating the middle class as
health insurance costs rocket out of reach. And as the nation saw after
Hurricane Katrina and as CNA/NNOC observed first hand, patients
with no health insurance after a disaster seek help from public facilities.
But instead of strengthening public-sector health facilities for the
critical role they play in keeping communities healthier than they'd otherwise be, many are finding themselves under attack from all directions.
The costs of caring for disproportionately greater numbers of uninsured than private hospitals in affluent areas mean lower reimbursements. Lower revenues, in turn, can kill a hospital. That had been and
continues to be a factor in the narrowly-averted closure of Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo, Calif.
W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G
REGISTERED NURSE
11
