National Nurses United

A couple months ago, 25-year-old Chris Taylor was house-sitting for a friend in the Santa Cruz moun- tains when he suddenly brushed up against a par- ticularly nasty case of poison oak after petting his friend's dog. Taylor, who had been diagnosed at age 7 as being extremely allergic to poison oak, was dis- mayed to find that not only was the skin on his arms blistering and burning, the rash was quickly spreading to his chest, neck, and scalp. It was going to be a bad one. In the past, he would have rushed to the local emergency room for a Prednisone shot to calm the inflammation, but since Tay- lor has no health insurance, he did nothing. After suffering for a few days, he finally called his mother for help. His mom, who works as an RN at nearby Dominican Hos- pital, found a colleague to write an oral Prednisone prescription for Taylor. Only after he forked over $30 and started the medica- tion was he able to find some relief from the pain and start heal- ing his raw, pussy skin. "I remember in the good old days when I could just go into the ER or make an appointment and walk in to see the doctor," says Taylor rather wistfully. "I can't do that anymore." As a full-time student studying history and philosophy at Cabrillo College who supports himself by waiting tables part time at a local Italian restaurant, Taylor has lots of company in the ranks of the uninsured. Among young adults his age, being unin- sured is the norm, not the exception. In fact, Taylor can think of only one friend who enjoys a health insurance benefit. Among California's 6.5 million nonelderly uninsured, young adults constitute almost half that number. According to a 2005 California Health Care Foundation "snapshot" report on the state's uninsured, nearly 20 percent are ages 18 to 24. Another 24 per- cent are ages 25 to 34. The same report found that about 40 per- cent of 21 to 24-year-olds were uninsured, and almost a third of both 18 to 20-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds were uninsured. Because he has no insurance, Taylor hasn't been able to ac- cess any kind of regular healthcare for almost six years. No doc- tor, no dentist, no vision checks. Nothing. Kicked off his mother's insurance at age 19 because he was no longer considered her legal dependent, Taylor has scraped along so far on a plan of luck, overall good health, plenty of over-the-counter medications, and, as a last resort, his nurse mom. But that's not to say that having no insurance hasn't hurt him at all. Knowing that he is medically and financially exposed has been stressful for Taylor, and those feelings of insecurity have manifested as a constant, low-level anxiety. "Everybody looks at life through a lens," says Taylor. "Mine is a lens without health insurance." L ike many young people, Taylor never really worried much about not having health insurance, that is, until he found himself working with power tools one summer as an appren- tice to a carpenter in Palo Alto. He was 22 years old and had al- ready been without insurance for three years. Apart from the 8 D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 C A L I F O R N I A N U R S E Feature Story ACCESS DENIED Chris Taylor is 25, working, and hasn't seen a doctor in six years. Join the club. Editor's note: This profile is the first of an occasional series to highlight the plight of California's uninsured and underin- sured. About 6.5 million, more than one in five of the state's nonelderly residents, have no coverage at all, and millions more are discovering that whatever insurance they have is not enough—not enough to defray the high costs of prescription drugs or expensive hospital stays. Meanwhile, the situation is worsening. In June, UC Berkeley researchers estimated that our numbers of uninsured will grow by 20 percent over the next five years as insurance premiums rise and more employ- ers stop offering coverage. This series is intended to match faces to these numbers, and show how many ordinary people suffer from the lack of dependable, affordable, and accessible healthcare services. Ultimately, the whole sad situation is a powerful argument for why the United States needs a univer- sal, single-payer healthcare system. Here are the stories to fuel our discussion. If you know of uninsured or underinsured people with good stories who'd be willing to be profiled, please contact us at calnursenews@calnurses.org. BY LUCIA HWANG

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