Kagen Damage Control

I was told to never assume (you know the first three letters in assume is), so will Mr. Kagen and the MSM do damage control on two different articles with all sorts of different numbers and different comments that are from one news conference call? This pertains to an article I wrote on the WTH blog site.

How can two newspapers have so much disparity? I thought I would copy the two different articles in case Mr. Kagen has them delete one of the two press releases. I will think the Green Bay Press-Gazette will be the article of choice since it has no comment of illegal immigration. It will be interesting to see what the Appleton Post Crescent will print on this. Again my guess is the Press-Gazette article will stay since it looks like they are towing the line for Mr. Kagen. Good job to GUY BOULTON from JS for good journalism.

From JSOnline

250 state deaths yearly blamed on insurance gap
Backers of universal care offer estimate
By GUY BOULTONgboulton@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 25, 2008
Nearly five people die each week in Wisconsin because they don't have health insurance, according to an estimate released Tuesday by a national group that supports universal coverage. That figure - roughly 250 people a year - is based on an update of an estimate released in 2002 by the Institute of Medicine, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences.
Families USA, a national health care consumer group, is releasing state figures based on the estimate in part to draw attention to the issue in the coming presidential election.
"This makes this hidden tragedy much more visible and quantifies the human toll of the health insurance crisis," said Robert Kraig, program director for Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a grass-roots political group that works on health care and other issues.
Nationally, an estimated 22,000 people die each year because they lack health insurance, according to a report released last year by the Urban Institute, a policy research group. That report updated the earlier estimate by the Institute of Medicine that 18,000 people died in 2000 because they lacked coverage.
Those figures are estimates and open to argument.
Len Nichols, a health care economist at the New America Foundation, described the Institute of Medicine estimate as a "statistical guess" at a conference on insurance coverage in December.
But Nichols also said, "I don't think there's anybody who actually treats the uninsured in real life who would argue with the fact that people in our country are dying because they don't have access to health care."
Many if not most doctors also can cite first-hand examples of patients who put off seeking needed care because they lack health insurance.
In the teleconference on the Families USA report, Barbara Horner-Ibler, medical director for the Bread of Healing Clinic, a free clinic in Milwaukee, cited the example of a 48-year-old man without insurance who died of colon cancer because he did not get the needed screenings despite a family history.
Wisconsin has one of the highest rates of insurance coverage in the country and accounts for only a small fraction of the estimated 22,000 people estimated to die each year nationally because of lack of insurance.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated an average of 514,000 people, or 9.4% of Wisconsin's population, were without coverage over a three-year period.
Surveys by the state consistently put the figure lower. The most recent estimated that 5% of the population in 2006 was uninsured for the full year and 8% was uninsured at a point in time.
Estimates on the number of people without health insurance vary, and no one really knows how many people are without coverage. The uninsured also are far from a homogenous group.
For example, the estimates include children and adults who would be eligible for existing state programs. They also include people who are without coverage for brief periods of time, illegal immigrants and young adults who may be able to afford a high-deductible plan.
But U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Green Bay), who participated in the teleconference, said there are 59,000 to 89,000 people in his district who have no insurance coverage.
Kagen, a physician, did not answer a question on whether he thought Congress would be willing to raise taxes to expand insurance coverage. But he said that expanding coverage could be done without raising taxes, in part by spending money more wisely.
Few question that the health care system can be made more efficient. But economists question the contention that coverage could be expanded to low-wage workers and people with pre-existing conditions - the two groups that make up the bulk of the long-term uninsured - without increasing costs.
One of them is Shoshanna Sofaer, a professor of health care policy at Baruch College in New York and a member of the Institute of Medicine committee that produced the initial estimate on the number of people who die because they lack coverage.
Expanding coverage or achieving universal coverage, she said in an e-mail, will cost additional money, at least initially.
"People who run away from that are actually not doing the cause of coverage expansion or universal coverage real favors," Sofaer wrote, "because it makes us look either ignorant or untrustworthy."
Thomas R. Oliver, a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, agreed.
"We haven't found a formula that can instantly expand coverage without increasing costs for somebody's bottom line," Oliver said.
Reports such at the one released by Families USA on Tuesday draw attention to the problem.
"But that's a very different question than who will pay," Oliver said. "And as soon as you get into who will pay, the political terrain gets very unstable and threatening to all parties."

Link from the Green Bay Press-Gazette

Posted March 26, 2008

Thousands uninsured, face increased risks
Brown County, state figures lower than nation's
By ELLYN FERGUSON Press-Gazette Washington bureau eferguson@greenbaypressgazette.com
WASHINGTON — More than 200 uninsured Wisconsinites a year die prematurely because they don't have access to preventive care or consistent treatment, a health advocacy group said Tuesday.
An estimated 1,600 early deaths occurred among uninsured Wisconsin adults between 2000 and 2006, nearly enough people to double the populations of Iola in central Wisconsin or towns of Rockland and Rushford in Northeastern Wisconsin, according to the Families USA report.
"Being uninsured has significant adverse consequences," Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a conference call with reporters. "The uninsured are less likely to have a usual source of care outside of the emergency room. The uninsured often delay or forgo medical care."
Nearly 9 percent of all state residents — an estimated 500,000 people — were uninsured at some point during 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Sixteen percent of the nation was without health insurance that year.
About 9 percent of Brown County residents went without either public or private insurance for some part of the year in 2005. Statewide, about 10 percent of people either reported they went the entire year without insurance or part of the year, according to the state's Department of Health and Family Services.
The N.E.W. Community Clinic, which has a downtown Green Bay site and a satellite clinic at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, is a primary care provider for the uninsured and low-income residents.
The downtown clinic generally serves between 6,000 and 8,000 people a year. Since it opened in the summer of 2006, the NWTC clinic has seen about 3,900 visits from mostly uninsured patients, clinic coordinator Mary Rahr said.
Wisconsin's low uninsured population was a result of state officials using public health insurance programs such as BadgerCare Plus to cover the poor and working poor, Pollack said.
Health insurance representatives in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., said groups like Families USA should look not only at insurance costs as a barrier to health-care access.
"Make health care more affordable and health insurance will be more affordable," said Phil Dougherty, senior executive officer of the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans. "Universal access to health-care coverage with rising health-care costs is not sustainable."
Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, said, "Health insurance premiums track directly to health-care costs. We need to address the health-care cost drivers."
He noted that health insurance premiums grew at their lowest rate in a decade in 2006.
"There's still more work to be done," Zirkelbach added.
Pollack was joined on Tuesday's teleconference by U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen, D-Appleton, Dr. Barbara Horner-Ibler, medical director of Milwaukee's Bread of Healing Clinic, and Robert Kraig, program director for Citizen Action of Wisconsin.
Families USA used research by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine and the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Urban Institute to estimate Wisconsin deaths. The group, which advocates federal health-care reform, plans to release reports for 21 states that link premature deaths among working-aged adults to a lack of health insurance.
Nationally, the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 died in 2000 because they were uninsured. The Urban Institute put the uninsured national death tally at approximately 22,000 in 2006.
Both studies said people without health insurance tend to be sicker than the insured because they skip checkups, screenings and other procedures that might diagnose serious illnesses earlier.
Families USA used the prior studies to provide state-level estimates on premature deaths.
"The conclusions are sadly clear. A lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people in Wisconsin," Pollack said.
Kagen, a freshman lawmaker with about 30 years' experience as an allergist, said there are 59,000 to 80,000 uninsured people in his 8th Congressional District, which spans most of Northeastern Wisconsin.
In his practice, Kagen said, he has had patients without insurance struggle to afford treatment.
"We took care of patients regardless of their insurance. We worked with them to help them afford their medication and gave them (pharmaceutical) samples as long as possible," he said.