Write a letter to the editor on the state of health care in that hospital staff
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Dear Editor:
As an Adult Nurse Practitioner student completing her final clinical rotation in a free community clinic for uninsured adults aged 18-64, I was very glad to read Dr. Baldwin’s article "Disparities in Health and Health Care," that is included in the topic of Diversity. Personally, I am seeing the disparities of both health and health care on a daily basis in a patient population composed primarily of African American, Latino, and Pakistani ethnic groups. For example, my clinic cannot refer these indigent patients to local cardiologists or OB-GYN specialists, because these practitioner groups refuse to accept any indigent patients. These particular specialists do not want to absorb the costs of caring for the already complex, chronic health problems of the clinic’s indigent patients, problems often resulting from their previous lack of access to health care.
As a provider on the front lines of health care delivery, I, too, am seeing the disparities in health resulting from a lack of access to care as a major problem. I would like to suggest that significant improvement is needed to remove the problem of access to care, or it will continue to be an uphill battle to remedy the disparities of health care. To significantly jump-start the process facilitating access to care, we must remove the burden of obtaining health insurance, which for most people is currently tied to employment, and offer universal health care coverage. We need creative, innovative solutions to push the present system out of its current chaos.
The current literature overwhelmingly supports that the fact that disparities continue in U. S. health care. The uninsured still do not receive the same level of care as the insured (Oberlander, 2002). With increasing numbers of Americans losing work due to the current floundering economy, the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2003) recently reported that 75 million people in the U. S. under the age of 65 were uninsured for some period of time between 2001-2002. Nearly two-thirds of these uninsured adults do not have access to consistent medical care and make less than 200% of the federal poverty line (Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, as cited by Oberlander, 2002). The United States can no longer afford to sacrifice a major portion of its citizenry to inadequate, substandard access to health care. For all the scientific and technological innovations that represent the best attributes of the U. S. health care system, a general consensus is forming that the system is broken, is not getting better, and is actually hurting the rising number of people who cannot gain consistent access to its services for lack of money. This lack of access is increasing health and health care disparities, as well as health care costs.
Carolyn A. Highsmith, BSN, RN
ANP Graduate Student
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Winston-Salem, NC
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