'ER' Star Lends Support to Uninsured

“Cover the Uninsured Week” — May 10 – May 16, 2004 — was announced May 5 in Washington DC by a diverse group including actor Noah Wyle, from the television show ER, to alert the public about the problems facing 44 million Americans without health insurance.

“The door for common ground and compromise is open,” said Dr. Lavisso-Mourney, president of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, speaking about the many years the uninsured issue has been fought over by special interest groups and politicians alike. “The longer we delay, the worse the problem gets.”

Other speakers included Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Dr. Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment, former Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, and two uninsured citizens: Catherine Edwards of Carthage, Ill., and Sarita Scarbrough of Houston, Texas.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued a report: “Characteristics of the Uninsured: A View from the States” with such staggering statistics as the 18,000 premature deaths that occur every year in the United States because of inadequate health insurance and the 8.5 children nationwide that are not insured.

Wyle, the national spokesperson for Cover the Uninsured Week, spoke about the 2 million people last year who became uninsured. Wyle said nearly 1,700 events are planned across America for the Week, expressing the hope that by doing this he could “…get more people to speak out [about the uninsured].”

Some of the events will include seminars for small, uninsured businesses and workshops for uninsured families.

Ross had three main points about the uninsured. “This is a problem of working Americans… he disproportionate impact on small businesses, [and the] particularly impacted communities of color.”

In Virginia, nearly 665,000 people, 14.2 percent of adults 18to 64 are uninsured. Among blacks the percentage 22.8 percent and among Hispanics it is 20.8 percent.

Rockefeller enforced the need to put aside partisan allegiance and to prevent health care providers from fighting each other for a greater share of federal spending on health care. Frist stressed the need to disregard politics and address the gaps in our nation’s health insurance.

Two uninsured citizens helped to put a human face on the issues addressed. Catherine Edwards is a single mother recently let go from her company who lost her health insurance because of it. She also lost a brother because he had hesitated to get a check-up because he did not have insurance. “If he had had the health insurance, it might have made the difference,” said Edwards. Sarita Scarbrough is a small business owner in Houston, Texas, who is unable to provide insurance for not only her ten employees, but also herself.

Sullivan, one of nine former HHS secretaries or surgeon generals backing Cover the Uninsured Week, left the conference with this thought: “We have not given health insurance the priority it needs.”