View this page "Publications of Interest"

[CaPA Office Manager]

Hello CaPA Activists-

Please check out the new field poll done by Senator Sheila Kuehl's
Office in reference to the rising popularity of the idea of
"Government Provided Healthcare" amongst the general population here
in California when you have a spare moment.

Please also take a look at our collection of publications and feel
free to send your questions, comments, concerns, request or ideas to
california-phys...@googlegroups.com.

Thanks-
Roberto Ramos

Click on http://groups.google.com/group/california-physicians-alliance/web/publications-of-interest
- or copy & paste it into your browser's address bar if that doesn't
work.

[CaPA Office Manager]

Hello CaPA Activists-

As many of you may have seen/heard in the news lately, Health Care for
America Now! (HCAN) has recently started it's campaign to provide the
US with a form of universal health care. We would like to encourage
our members to become familiar with HCANs proposals for such a system
and what a system like this could mean to the future of the single-
payer movement.

Please check out these articles from The New Republic that tend to
summarize the debate between HCAN's proposal and the single-payer
system:

Single-Minded:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=34b6a8b8-68bf-4f39-be13-7c99cf95d8c6

Disputations: Is Single-Payer Health Care the Best Option?:
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7aa401b5-f1f4-4564-921c-00f97b917605%20

We would also like to encourage our activists to forward your
comments, questions, or suggestions regarding this debate to
california...@gmail.com

Kindest Regards,
Roberto Ramos
California Physicians Alliance
2344 Sixth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
P: 510.665.8523
F: 510.665.6027

[CaPA Office Manager]

Copies of the study are available at http://www.pnhp.org/chronically_ill

Embargoed until:
August 4, 2008
5:01 p.m. EST
Contacts:
Andrew P. Wilper, M.D., (503) 260-4948, wilp...@u.washington.edu
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, ma...@pnhp.org

Over 11 million Americans with chronic physical illnesses like heart
disease, diabetes and asthma are not getting the medical care they
need because they don’t have health insurance, a new study shows. The
study provides the first national estimate of the number of uninsured
adults with these potentially serious but treatable conditions.

According to an article published in the Aug. 5 edition of Annals of
Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal, working-age adults with
one or more chronic illnesses who reported they were uninsured were
nearly four times more likely than their insured counterparts to have
not seen a health professional within the past year (22.6 percent
versus 6.2 percent). They were also six times more likely to identify
a hospital emergency room as their standard site for care when sick
(7.1 percent versus 1.1 percent).

“We have made dramatic advances in treatment of chronic illnesses like
heart disease and high blood pressure,” said Dr. Andrew Wilper, the
study’s lead author. “But many Americans are locked out of the system
because they are uninsured and cannot afford this life-saving care.

“Many of these individuals end up with preventable emergency room
visits, hospitalizations, amputations, kidney failure or worse because
their chronic condition has gotten out of control,” he said.

Wilper’s team analyzed data from surveys conducted by the National
Center for Health Statistics. The team found that there are 11.4
million nonelderly adults with one or more chronic conditions who lack
health insurance, including 1.3 million who survived a heart attack or
stroke, 5.9 million with high blood pressure, 1.4 million with
diabetes and 3.5 million with asthma or emphysema. Individuals with at
least one of these conditions, or with high cholesterol or prior
cancer (excluding minor skin cancers), were considered to have a
chronic illness.

The 11.4 million figure represents about one-third of the total number
of uninsured people in the United States between the ages of 18 and
64. Altogether, about 47 million Americans lacked health insurance in
2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The authors say they may have underestimated the number of chronically
ill persons who lack insurance because the survey did not query
participants about depression or other chronic mental illnesses, and
because undiagnosed physical diseases among the uninsured may be
common.

Uninsured people with chronic illnesses face serious obstacles to
getting needed care, Wilper said. But he also observed that people who
are enrolled in high-deductible health plans often face similar
barriers to getting regular medical attention.

“Some plans, for example, require people to pay medical bills of
$5,000 out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in,” he said. “These
plans put people in the precarious state of being underinsured, which
is not that much better than lacking health insurance altogether.”

Wilper, who currently teaches at the University of Washington School
of Medicine in Seattle, was a fellow at Harvard University and the
Cambridge Health Alliance when the study was carried out.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the study, is an associate
professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in
Cambridge, Mass. Woolhandler noted: “Some claim that uninsured
Americans can get the care they need in emergency rooms. But emergency
rooms may provide too little, too late for the millions of uninsured
with chronic conditions. They need regular medical monitoring, and a
steady supply of medications to control their illnesses, and a whole
array of services that are out of reach for the uninsured.

“Only national health insurance can fix this broken system and save
thousands of lives each year,” she said.

********

Copies of the study are available at http://www.pnhp.org/chronically_ill
“Chronically Ill and Uninsured: A National Study of Disease Prevalence
and Access to Care in U.S. Adults,” Andrew P. Wilper, MD; Steffie
Woolhandler, MD, MPH; Karen E. Lasser, MD, MPH; Danny McCormick, MD;
David H. Bor, MD; and David U. Himmelstein, MD. Annals of Internal
Medicine, August 2008. Annals of Internal Medicine is published by the
American College of Physicians.