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Health Care Task Force

Caring for All Texans

To Dr. Kenneth Shine, executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas System, it's a statistic that should humble even the proudest Texan: Our state has the highest rate of uninsured residents of any other.

Nationwide, an average of 15 percent of all Americans are uninsured. In Texas, that percentage is estimated at 25 to 28 percent.

"Being uninsured is unhealthy," Dr. Shine says. "It's a major cause of death and disability."

Dr. Shine is a participant in a blue-ribbon, 19-member task force engaged in a year-long study of Texans' access to health care. The task force, which represents an unprecedented cooperation among Texas' academic health institutions and other educational institutions from around the state, will analyze the magnitude of Texas' rapidly growing numbers of uninsured families and suggest workable solutions.

At the task force's first meeting in September, Texas State Demographer Steve Murdock warned the panel of the profound effects of population growth on the state's need for health care. Non-Anglo Texans, who have some of the highest rates of being uninsured in the state, have shown rapid increases in obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.

These are health problems, Shine says, that can be more easily and inexpensively managed when people have insurance and regular health care. Without prevention and early treatment, though, ailments such as high-blood pressure can spiral into chronic, costly and even life-threatening medical conditions.

American taxpayers pay more than $25 billion every year to cover unpaid medical costs for the uninsured. These losses occur, particularly at local levels, because so many uninsured patients come to hospital emergency rooms for treatment. With insurance, Travis County primary-care visits cost an average of $100; lacking insurance and primary care, patients who visit Travis County emergency rooms are charged an average of $265 per visit. Because of spiraling costs and overcrowding, 15 percent of the country's emergency rooms have been forced to close.

Even beyond communities' overwhelming financial burdens and potential loss of emergency care, Dr. Shine sees the worsening plight of uninsured families as a massive, society-wide failure that affects all Texans. Lack of health care shortens lives and bankrupts families whose breadwinners' health is neglected. Although more than two-thirds of Texas' uninsured are employed, often neither they nor their employers can afford health insurance.

"To insure a family of four costs $9,000 a year," Dr. Shine says. "For a family at the federal poverty level of $18,000, it's unaffordable. Even for a family at twice the federal poverty level, it's still prohibitive."

More than anything, lack of health care is undermining our society and our future, Dr. Shine believes.

"It affects people's attitudes about the future, when they don't have proper health care," he says. "Think about it. If you're a kid with asthma, sick, and in and out of school - it has something to do with the way you think about your future.

"It makes me think of what life is like in undeveloped countries I've visited. When you have very high mortality rates, you don't build bridges or schools. You don't even think about it. You don't have a future to work toward."

With a commitment to making Texas a different sort of society - where all its citizens have a greater possibility of long and healthy lives - the blue-ribbon task force will be pursuing solutions over the next several months. Its next meeting will be Dec. 14 and 15 in Austin.

As Dr. Shine notes, "The future of our state is at stake."

For more on the task force, go to http://www.utsystem.edu/hea/taskforce/homepage.htm