Our Health Policy Matters

If you want to be healthy, then be wealthy. Or at least live in a wealthy county. That’s the obvious message you get from combining the recently released County Health Rankings with poverty and income data from the 2010 U.S. Census. Source: US Census and County Health Rankings, 2012 But if you look closer, you see something else.  It’s not just that poorer people are less healthy than their wealthier counterparts.  People are less healthy where too few resources are invested in public health. Earlier this month, the 2012 County Health Rankings were released by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  In the release , Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO of RWJF, said that “where we live, work, learn, and play has a big role in determining how healthy we are and how long we live.” She’s right. The poorest counties – as measured by the percentage of people living below the poverty level – are us

Thirty years ago, AIDS was a total mystery to us. Six years into what CDC already termed an epidemic, 358 AIDS cases in twenty states had been confirmed and 136 people had died.  No one knew why. Several people I knew were probably already infected with HIV.  I learned this only as they died over the next few years.  One was a popular Connecticut Congressman, Stew McKinney, who was a moving force behind federal funding for services for homeless people.  Another was a lawyer named Jim Hurley. I first met Jim when we were high school debaters.   His school debated against my school at several local and regional debate tournaments.  I remembered him as bright, easy-going, and friendly. We reintroduced ourselves during our first year in college, when we crossed paths in his dormitory one day.  He hadn’t changed much.  He was personable, still friendly, and happy to exchange a few stories about Catholic high schools and debating. I transferred to Wesleyan and los

Imagine what a nightmare healthcare scenario might look like. You are diagnosed with a debilitating chronic disease while young.  At first, you can’t even work because of it, and you are dependent on a family member’s insurance to help pay your medical expenses.  Eventually, your disease goes into remission, and you find a job with health insurance.  You go off your family member’s plan.  But your employer goes bankrupt, and you’re left with no job and no insurance.  Then you get another chronic disease. You try the individual health insurance market, but the only insurance available to you comes from a high risk pool in which everyone else also has at least one chronic disease.  The price is outrageous, but you pay the bill as long as you can. Eventually, you can’t afford it, and you become uninsured for a few months.  You apply to your state’s Medicaid program for help.  You are denied because your state has already spent all the Medicaid dollars the feder

Anna Brown was 29 years old when she died suddenly last September. She left two small children.  Sometimes, the tragic and untimely death of a young mother commands our attention.  Anna’s death in Missouri drew a little national interest just last week.  She died alone on a concrete jail cell floor.  It happened just a few minutes after she was arrested for trespassing.  She refused to leave a hospital emergency room while she was in agonizing pain.    Anna Brown was homeless, had mental illness, and was on Medicaid.  Hospital officials thought she was a drug-seeker.  They were wrong.  According to news reports , a morning fog blanketed St. Louis on September 20, 2011 – the day Anna died.  She spent much of her final day going from emergency room to emergency room begging for care.  She started at St. Louis University Hospital complaining of pain in her leg.  She was evaluated and released with a prescription for painkilling medication.  Unsatisfied with her