On Tuesday, September 22, 2009, The HealthWell Foundation, one of America's largest co-payment assistance organizations, hosted a panel discussion to help draw attention to the growing crisis of the underinsured and the related challenges of reducing financial barriers to care.
Held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, "Health Care in America: What About the Underinsured" featured a panel of highly-esteemed industry stakeholders, each representing a different perspective in the health care debate. Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor of the New Republic and author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price, moderated the discussion, which presented the views of a wide range of stakeholders, from business to labor and patient to provider.
"While I used to say you're only one job loss away from financial ruin because of a medical catastrophe, now I say that you're one job loss or one diagnosis away from financial ruin," said Cohn. "And I think the good news is that this recognition has entered our policy debate."
Panelists included Stephen Finan, Senior Director of Policy for the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network; Lowell Schnipper, M.D., of Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts; David Hom, formerly of Pitney Bowes and now of Solucia Well; John McDonough, who is working with the Senate HELP Committee on heath care reform issues; and HealthWell Foundation beneficiary Virginia Pivik, a breast cancer survivor who credits her recovery to the financial assistance she received from the HealthWell Foundation. Each emphasized the dire need for a reformed health care system that adequately addresses not only the 47 million uninsured Americans in our country, but also the estimated 25-70 million underinsured.
"Clearly, we are very concerned about the uninsured and the absolute necessity of providing access to them, but as we began to look at the landscape, we also saw that there was this growing problem of underinsurance," said Stephen Finan. "We've made this a signature issue for us because we think it's just an understated problem."