There are 3.7 million Floridians without health insurance. That means if you are under the age of 65, there's about a 1 in 4 chance that a serious illness would drive you into bankruptcy. But fear not - Gov. Charlie Crist has a plan. He calls it Cover Florida, and with it, he hopes to reduce the number of uninsured by offering them affordable premiums.
Insurance agencies that wish to participate in the program cannot deny coverage to anyone under the age of 65 who has been uninsured for at least six months. In return for this concession, insurance companies are not subject to Florida laws, which mandate that certain services be covered. Instead, the plans are only required to have very basic features. Each company must offer a plan for normal medical visits as well as a plan providing catastrophic coverage. Crist has said he hopes these plans will cost about $150 a month.
While this might all sound good on paper, in reality, Cover Florida is neither novel nor feasible.
From a public policy perspective, it's doomed for disaster. Similar plans have failed in seven other states as well as in Florida, where it has operated under the name Health Flex. Cover Florida is essentially the same program as Health Flex except that it's available to everyone under 65, not just those with an income well below the Federal Poverty Level.
Aside from having notoriously low enrollment, these types of plans are dangerous to our health care and financial security. If you opt for the catastrophic coverage, you're probably going to forego preventative care - a crucial factor in maintaining your own health and controlling public health care costs. If you go for one of the normal plans, you're likely to face high out-of-pocket co-payment costs and deductibles. Numerous studies have shown these types of plans force people to skip needed medical treatment. Also, if people without catastrophic coverage have some sort of severe health event, they're going to be responsible for those costs. Health-related debts are already responsible for half of all bankruptcies, and about 75 percent of those filing had insurance when they got sick. As such, Cover Florida gives people a false sense of security while exposing them to serious health and financial risks.
Worse yet, since these plans don't have to cover such things as anti-psychotic drugs and cancer, they aren't likely to cover them. In fact, if you want cancer coverage, you'll have to purchase that separately, which is nice if you are blessed with visions of the future to predict if you'll get cancer, but it's just too bad for the other 100,000 Floridians diagnosed with this vicious disease every year. And while these insurance plans can't deny anyone outright, they can still refuse to cover any chronic disorders, such as sickle cell anemia.
Despite all these pitfalls, there is one glaring reason Cover Florida will fail: Almost two-thirds of Florida's uninsured earn less than 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. These folks are unlikely to have $150 a month, especially for an insurance plan that doesn't provide sufficient coverage.
But Cover Florida is more than just bad policy; it's downright sinister. Plans like these perpetuate the idea that the working class doesn't deserve quality health care. The main purveyors of this thinking are elected officials, such as Crist, who have fantastic taxpayer-subsidized health care and enough personal wealth to pay for any premiums or other fees. Perhaps if they used the same broken medical system the rest of us do, there would be more impetus for reform.
Instead, we get the same stale ideas that prop up a tiered health care system based on wealth. It's time to stop this. We need a sustainable system that gives everyone equal access to our world-class physicians and facilities. We need health care that doesn't pit profits against human health. We need single-payer health care, and we need it now.
Brandon Sack is a second-year biomedical sciences graduate student. His column appears Thursdays.
