Word: careful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...price tag for AIDS medical care this year will be $3.75 billion. But U.S. health providers are ducking the responsibility to help those in need...
...worries. As a court reporter, Simpson, 44, was earning $48,000 a year and was covered by group health insurance. In addition, he had planned ahead by buying three disability policies. Less than a year later, however, he has fallen through the widening cracks in the U.S. medical- care system. Too weak to work, he has lost the insurance coverage from his job; moreover, he has yet to see a penny from his disability policies, although he filed six months ago. "I'm just tired of being a victim," the pale, bushy-haired Simpson says slowly, pausing to gather strength...
Like Simpson, many of those caught up in the spiraling AIDS epidemic are awash in medical expenses they cannot afford. And the safety net beneath them has proved less than reassuring. Since the AIDS crisis began in the early 1980s, the nation's private health-care industry -- hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms -- has engaged in quiet combat with government agencies over who should foot the bill for the disease, which now afflicts an estimated 44,000 Americans. And the tab is rising. This year the cost for AIDS medical care is expected to be $3.75 billion; by 1992 that...
...rushing in to assume the financial burden. "Everyone is playing duck and cover while trying to shield themselves from the costs," observes Ronald Brunk of AIDS Benefits Counselors in San Francisco. This year federal and state programs will pay 40% of the bill, with private insurers taking care of another 40%. The remaining 20% falls in the "self pay" -- often meaning "no pay" -- category. The most important government program, Medicaid, is available only to impoverished patients. As a result, those infected with the AIDS virus frequently must "spend down" into poverty, demonstrating that they hold assets of less than...
...thicket of state insurance laws makes it possible in some cases for private insurers to find ways to keep profits up and payments for AIDS care down. In 1985 one firm, the Great Republic Insurance Co., even issued an "AIDS profile" to its agents, instructing them to treat differently applications from "single males without dependents that are engaged in occupations that do not require physical exertion." These applicants were usually denied insurance. While such major insurers as Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the Travelers deny discriminating on the basis of AIDS, others still use information about living arrangements, residences...