Wesley Marecle's Article

Affordable Healthcare

by Wesley Marecle

Mississippi is usually ranked last in all things that are good, and first in all of the bad categories. Healthcare does not exclude this either, Mississippi has hundreds of thousands of uninsured citizens. Many are hoping that maybe one day they will have ways of being able to get affordable healthcare.

           

According to StateHealthFacts.org in the United States 16 percent of the population is uninsured. In Mississippi that number is 19 percent, which means more than 500,000 people, have no health insurance.

According to research from the AARP nearly 95,000 Mississippians age 50-64 are uninsured. There are also thousands of people in Mississippi on Medicaid and Medicare as well. In some of these cases the people are too young for Medicare, but to old to have to pay on high insurance premiums. In Mississippi 13 percent of the population is on Medicare, 378,000 people. Medicaid is higher with 21 percent of the population, 618,000 people. 

The AARP also reported that in 2007, Mississippians paid more on average for prescription drug cost than the rest of the United States. In 2005, Mississippians filled on an average of 13 prescriptions a year. 52 percent of these prescriptions were generics. If biological treatments were also available in generics Mississippians could save millions of dollars a year.

The most obvious problem with not having health insurance is trying to find a place to get treated. Even if you have Medicare or Medicaid some places will just not take you. However, there are a few exceptions of clinics that will take you if you have no insurance.

There are a few right here in Oxford Mississippi that will actually accept you if you don’t have insurance. AllCare Mississippi is one and the Pregnancy Test Center is another one. These local clinics offer their services to the uninsured people of Mississippi.

Kimberly Van Every is the Advanced Practice Registered Nurse at AllCare Mississippi Clinic. Her clinic accepts all patients if they are uninsured or not. Her clinic is one of the few in Mississippi that will actually do this.

They will take underinsured and the uninsured. They offer a discount to the uninsured and will also offer a payment plan if it is needed. If you are uninsured they offer a sliding fee schedule based on their poverty level. If the person is at 100 percent poverty level they can pay as little as just $15 per visit. AllCare Mississippi saw 29.2 percent of their customers last year that were uninsured.

The Pregnancy Test Center in Oxford Mississippi will also take uninsured patients. The difference in AllCare Mississippi and the Pregnancy Test Center is that the Pregnancy Test Center is a privately owned operation mostly funded by churches. Donations are taken and the program runs off these donations.

Dr. Peggy Thomas is the executive director of the Pregnancy Test Center.

               “We want the people to know that they still have an option even if they don’t have money to pay for a baby. We are pro life and will do anything possible to keep the child from getting aborted,” Thomas said.

There are many different reasons for someone not to have health insurance. For one it may cost way too much as in Charles Jone’s case. Charles has Crohn’s disease and he also has to get off his parents health insurance in the next year. Charles has been searching for health insurance plans that he might be able to afford. The cheapest so far he says is around $700 a month.

               “I guess when I turn 26 I just won’t have health insurance. It is too expensive and I cannot pay the price for it,” Jones said.

The Affordable Healthcare Act could help some of these people by providing coverage to over 30 million people that are uninsured. It could also help people like Charles out by creating small health insurance markets where you can go with a group of people to buy health insurance for a cheaper price. And also help many college students by allowing them to stay on their parents plan till they turn 26.

The Affordable Healthcare Act will also do much more than just offering health insurance markets. It allows young adults to stay on their parent’s plans till they are 26. It will also expand Medicaid to cover more uninsured low-income people. It will require for companies with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance coverage. On top of all these and more it will provide affordable healthcare to more than 30 million uninsured citizens.

The Affordable Healthcare Act will help millions of citizens, but there are other ways that the government could help local clinics such ass AllCare Missisippi.

               “They can offer better reimbursement something that’s more comparable to insurances such as Blue Cross Blue Shield. It can also offer 100 percent reimbursement on Medicare Patients because for other providers it actually does reimburse those providers at 100 percent, but for nurse practitioner owned clinics it only reimburses us 80 percent of the liable for Medicare. And also just offering more incentive payments. There are incentive payments out there that the government does do for providers that see Medicare and Medicaid patients. Just offering more incentive payments for other providers to actually want to do that,” Van Every said.