85,000 lost health insurance in Sacramento area, UCLA study finds

This story is taken from Sacbee / Medical News / Health & Fitness

85,000 lost health insurance in Sacramento area, UCLA study finds

bcalvan@sacbee.com

Published Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010

Researchers issued yet another grim statistic Monday on the toll of the recession: 2 million additional Californians – 85,000 of them in the capital region – lost their health care coverage during the recent economic slide.

As a result, difficult decisions are playing out in living rooms and across kitchen tables as families struggle with joblessness and tighter finances, according to the authors of a new UCLA study that gives a county-by-county account of the state's swelling numbers of uninsured, now estimated at 8 million.

In Sacramento County, 17.6 percent of the non-elderly population went uninsured at some point last year, compared with 13.1 percent in 2007. In two years, the ranks of the county's uninsured climbed by 63,000 people – bringing the total to more than 224,000, according to the study by the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Health Policy Research.

Despite the ongoing federal overhaul of the health care system, relief for many of the newly uninsured won't arrive anytime soon. Key provisions of the landmark legislation, including subsidies for purchasing health insurance through state-run exchanges and the expansion of Medi-Cal, won't be available until at least 2014.

"Job loss, foreclosures, and a loss of insurance coverage have combined in many areas of the state to make families vulnerable to prolonged financial as well as health problems," the study states.

The unemployment rate in the Sacramento region stood at 12.7 percent in July, slightly higher than the 12.3 percent statewide.

"It could have been much worse in Sacramento," said said Shana Alex Lavarreda, the study's lead author.

She noted that the region's corps of state workers might have kept the unemployment rate, and by extension the rate of uninsured, from going higher. "There were furlough days, but at least the state wasn't laying people off thousands at a time, unlike private industry."

Still, nearly 85,000 in Sacramento, Placer, Yolo and El Dorado counties lost medical coverage between 2007 and 2009.

Julie Zimmerman, 52, lost her job as a marketing director two years ago.

Unable to find another job, she enrolled in community college to gain new skills. Without health insurance, she relied on Sacramento County's primary care clinic for medical care to ease the pain from an ailing back.

Nonprofit community clinics are also carrying a heavier load, according to Marty Keale, executive director of the Capitol Community Health Network, a coalition of 14 nonprofit facilities.

"There are more patients, and more of them are showing up without health insurance," Keale said. "People who had been going elsewhere for medical care are showing up at their doors."

UCLA researchers estimate that 24.3 percent of Californians under the age of 65 were uninsured at some point last year, compared with 19.4 percent two years prior. The statistic translates to nearly 2 million additional Californians having gone without health coverage since the start of the recession.

"We now know that the crisis of people losing health insurance is not limited to any one area. This is a problem in every California county," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group.

From Siskiyou County in the north state to Imperial County on the Mexican border, the recession has cut into the health care safety net – particularly in rural areas, such as the San Joaquin and upper Sacramento valleys.

Urban areas, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, had higher rates of insured residents – although Los Angeles County was a notable exception, with 2.7 million non-elderly residents, or 28.9 percent of its population, going without health insurance at some period in 2009.

"The recession has been going on for so long, and the scary part is that the unemployment rate is still about 12 percent," said UCLA's Lavarreda. "When you're suddenly on an extremely tight budget, it comes down as a choice between buying groceries or buying prescription drugs."