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Our email address is inotherwords@kqed.org.About In Other Words
In Other Words is part of the Digital Natives project, a CPB funded partnership between Youth Radio and KQED Public Media.
Youth Radio Talks Health Care Ads
Youth Radio interns discuss some of the recent health care television ads.
Study Examines Minority Health Care Costs
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington, DC, has published a new study that raises the question of how inequities in health care for minorities are impacting the cost of health care in the country at large. The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.
Some of the health disparities minorities face include these statistics:
•Mexican-Americans are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes as whites.
•Vietnamese-American women have nearly five times the rate of cervical cancer as white women.
•Black men are twice as likely to have prostate cancer as white men.
The study confirmed that minority Americans are much more likely to die as infants, have shorter life spans, and have higher rates of diseases and disabilities. However, the issue is complex and the cause of the disparities is not completely known.
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Baucus Plan Fines Young People Without Health Insurance
By: Emily Beaver
No health insurance? That’ll be $950.
For many young people, health insurance is unaffordable. But under some plans to reform health care, going without health insurance will be expensive, too.
Senator Max Baucus recently introduced a health care reform plan that requires everyone to get insurance. Anyone who doesn’t have insurance would be fined up to $950 a year, depending on income.
Making sure everyone gets health insurance is an important goal of many of the plans to reform health care. For some, the principle that everyone should have health care is behind the “individual mandate” requiring everyone to get health insurance. But there’s another reason lawmakers want to get everyone insured–to lower the government’s cost of making health insurance affordable.
All forms of insurance, including health insurance, work by spreading costs among a pool of people. Since young people generally spend less on medical care, their insurance premiums help to subsidize the cost of care for older, sicker people. When young people don’t buy insurance, costs go up for those who are insured. So making sure everyone contributes to health insurance is important to lowering costs overall.
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Old vs. Young–the Health Care Tug-of-War
By: Emily Beaver
What’s age got to do with it?
Well, when it comes to what you pay for health insurance — age is important.
Age-rating, or using age to determine how much someone pays for health insurance, has recently been getting a lot of press. And like much of the health care debate, age-rating is turning into a battle between the older and younger generations.
What’s the fight over? Changing age-rating practices could lead to lower insurance premiums for older adults, but higher premiums for younger adults.
Usually private insurance companies charge older adults more for health insurance than younger adults. As people age, they generally have more health problems and spend more on health care services. The system seems fair—the people who use the most services pay the highest premiums.
Well, not everyone agrees. Some people and groups that advocate for older adults say age-rating isn’t fair because people can’t help aging. And age isn’t the only indicator of health, they say. An active, 52-year-old may be healthier than a 30-year-old who lives on cheese fries, Diet Coke and cigarettes.
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Young Doesn’t Mean Invincible
By Emily Beaver
After volunteering for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, Georgetown University law student Aaron Smith started watching the national conversation about health care unfold. Smith, 27, knew many young people who had problems getting health care, but he didn’t see their perspectives being represented in the health care debate.
To address this inadequacy, Smith and five other young people who volunteered for the Obama campaign started the Young Invincibles. The group describes themselves as 18 to 34-year-olds committed to making sure young people are heard in the debate about health care overhaul. They want to dispel the notion that young people don’t care about health care and hope to improve the health care coverage that young people receive.
Youth Radio recently interviewed Smith to find out more:
Q: Why is health care reform an important issue for young people?
A: There are more uninsured young people than any other age group. No group is all the same–some older people don’t have insurance. But generally, young people don’t have insurance because of the lack of access to affordable insurance.
Putting aside the issue of whether young people have health insurance, we have a lot at stake in the future of the country. The increase in health care costs is out of control. If costs keep going up, it’s going to hurt the country. There’s also the fundamental issue that everyone should have access to health care. If you get sick or some tragedy should befall you, you should be able get care without going into debt.
Q: The Young Invincibles campaign focuses on the large number of uninsured young adults—approximately 13.7 million. How does a lack of health insurance impact a young person’s life?
A: There’s a culture of anxiety and apprehension about the health care system. The people we come across, if they get injured, their first thought isn’t “Can I get care?,” it’s “Can I avoid going to get care?” — because it’s going to be expensive.
Q: Young Invincibles is gathering stories about young peoples’ encounters with the health care system. What kinds of stories are you hearing?
A: A guy we know from Texas who didn’t have health insurance was working on his car with a drill, gashed his leg badly, and went to the emergency room [and had staples put in his leg]. It wound up costing him thousands of dollars. By the end, he was so fed up with the process that he took out the staples by himself so he didn’t have to go back to get care.
Another young woman, maybe 23, had just graduated from the college. She was looking for a job and she decided to purchase COBRA [a government program that allows people to keep group health insurance for up to 18 months after losing coverage under an employer's or parent’s plan]. She developed a serious blood disorder. If she stood up, her blood pressure changed drastically. It totally changed her life. She fears that if she uses her real name when she’s getting treatment, her insurance will cancel her policy. Not only is she afraid of losing her coverage, she’s afraid she won’t be able to get coverage again.
Even young people who are lucky enough to have insurance, have problems. Reforming the system is going to help everyone.
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Tales From the Edit Booth
Youth Radio's Nate works on a video project. Photo: Courtesy of Youth Radio
As part of the Digital Natives project, Youth Radio will use their own words and platforms to re-tell several stories that KQED has already reported. I’m currently working with Nate, one of Youth Radio’s video producers, and the genius behind the Now! That’s What I Call Songs About Politics video. Our goal: to create a video on health care that young people will want to watch, that will be good enough for that compliment of all compliments, to be posted on Facebook.
Working with Nate has been fun and a good lesson in finding the middle ground. We both agree on our goals but we started out with two different visions of getting there. Nate firmly believes that the video must be funny. While I don’t disagree with that, I do worry about being insensitive to a serious topic. He has convinced me that humor will hook an audience that we can then inform. At one point he turned to me and candidly asked why a young person would want to learn about health care, what would motivate them to watch a video about it. I couldn’t really provide a good answer.
My priority on the other hand was information. I want the video to convey enough information to make it worthwhile. Nate and I have set a goal of including 5 facts in the video. Not bad for a project that will only be about a minute long.
Stay tuned for more Tales From the Edit Booth.
Ten Health Care Terms You Need to Know
By: Emily Beaver
Maybe you’ve heard President Obama talking about revamping health care or you’ve seen TV news reports about people protesting at recent town hall meetings. If you think changes to health care don’t impact you, it’s time to tune into the debate.
Many young people aren’t covered by their parents’ health plans, don’t get insurance at work, can’t afford to buy insurance or simply don’t think they’ll get sick. But if you get sick or injured when you’re uninsured, you might not get the medical care you need or you may go into debt because of medical bills.
Cutting through the health care jargon isn’t easy, so I went searching for answers. I spoke with a few experts: Claire Brindis, Director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco; Melissa Rodgers, Associate Director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic and Family Security; and William Dow, Associate Professor of health care economics at U.C. Berkeley. With their help, I compiled a list of ten health care terms everyone should know:
1. Expanding coverage
One goal of health care revision is making sure that everyone can get health insurance, including young people. About 30% of Americans ages 19-24 don’t have insurance, and one in seven teens is without insurance, says Brindis. Other goals are making sure that people who do have insurance can keep it and lowering the costs of providing health care.
2. The public option
You may have heard debate about whether a “public option” should be included in health care changes. The public option is health insurance run by the government, says Rodgers.
A public health insurance plan would be one option for people who don’t have insurance, or don’t have insurance that covers their medical needs, Rodgers says. No one would be forced to participate in the public plan.
3. Medicare/Medicaid
Medicare and Medicaid (which is called Medi-Cal in California) are public health insurance plans the government already runs. Medicare is a national program that provides health insurance for people age 65 and older, and some younger people with disabilities.
Medicaid is a health insurance program for low-income people run by individual states. Each state has different rules about how poor you must be to qualify for Medicaid, Brindis says. Undocumented adults and children do not qualify for Medicaid.
4. Individual Mandate
An individual mandate means that every American would be required to have health insurance. If this mandate was approved, young people could no longer go without health insurance because they can’t afford it or don’t think they will get sick, says Dow.
If everyone has to be insured, the government will have to help cover the cost of people who can’t afford insurance, Dow says.
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Health Care That’s on the House
In 2007, the US Census Bureau released a study reporting that 45.7 million Americans were without health insurance. Those living without health insurance often can’t afford basic checkups, let alone serious treatment.
On August 10-18, 2009, the Inglewood Forum (where Magic Johnson and the Lakers used to play) hosted a Remote Area Medical no-cost health care event. On each day 1,500 residents were allowed free access to medical, dental, and vision treatment, again making the Forum the place where the “magic happens.”
23-year-old Jamar Neighbors of Los Angeles has no health insurance. He took advantage of the opportunity to get medical treatment on the house.
Can Health Care Be Sexy?
Can health care be sexy?
I’m spending my morning perusing KQED’s recent coverage for stories to be retold by Youth Radio.
I choose some of the stories because I think they will benefit from coverage in a new platform. An interview about the Exploratorium’s new partnership with the Okeanos Explorer–let’s get some pictures; a story about Governor Schwarzenegger calling for more digital textbooks–how about talking to some students who will live the impact of the legislative changes. . . those stories are natural choices for a retelling.
But then there are stories like the budget crisis, health care reform, and California’s water politics. Important? You bet. Sexy? Not at all. How do you make such stories appealing not only in content but in delivery? And should we? Are we making the mistake that newspapers are often accused of making–are we dictating the news to our audience, instead of listening to our audience? And who are we to assume that a young audience is only interested in sexy news?
This is the challenge of the Digital Natives project, the questions we are living in our partnership.
Youth Radio is currently taking on health care. Will it be sexy? I don’t know. But I can tell you it’s not going to be somebody rapping “Single Payer Playah.”
A 'Tonik' for Your Pain
Are you a thrill-seeker, a part-time daredevil or a calculated risk-taker? A health plan aimed at 19-29 year-olds would be happy to let you be any of the three—for a deductible of course.
Tonik Health Insurance is for young (aka high-risk but healthy) people and is owned by Blue Cross. Their marketing campaign, which is advertised heavily on younger-oriented sites like The Huffington Post, looks more like an iPod commercial than a place to buy health insurance.
And, that’s the idea. Tonik has won awards for its unique marketing, and has grown more popular as more and more young people find themselves without jobs that offer coverage.
Ryan Simon has been on Tonik since he was 20. Now 23, he has mixed feelings about his “calculated risk-taker” plan. After he aged out of his family insurance, Simon’s father found the Tonik plan and suggested he take a look.
“He told me to look through the fine print, but at 20 I wasn’t adept at researching health insurance. I think most people, however old they are, don’t understand health insurance,” Simon said.
Tonik is designed for Simon’s demographic—referred to by insurance companies as “young invincibles”. Young invincibles are 19-29 year-olds who have recently graduated or who don’t get insurance from their jobs. There are over 13.2 million “young invincibles” in America, and they make up over 30% of the uninsured population.
Tonik’s approach is that getting stuck with a deductible is better than the risk of going uninsured.
"Those people that choose to go uninsured are literally putting their financial futures at risk," said Richard White, a vice president with Wellpoint Blue Cross Blue Shield told CBS. "They're literally one accident away from having their future impacted by a costly accident."
Young invincibles are great for insurers because they tend not to get sick and go to a doctor as much as older people. They are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior—in Simon’s case, riding a bike daily without a helmet.
When Simon got into a bike accident last winter he thought he knew his arm wasn't broken, but thought he should get it checked out.
“I was at the hospital for 3 hours, they took a couple of x-rays, gave me a shot, a pill and I spoke with a doctor. And that was $3000.” Under the Tonik plan’s deductible, that visit cost him over $1000. For Simon, that meant a month’s salary.
Tonik's advertising argues that cost is better than the alternative. One ad features a cartoon figure with an African mask dancing. The caption reads: "There’s a reason the phrase isn’t you should see a witch doctor for that.” The dancing figure fades and the ad simply reads, “There’s no substitute for professional medical help”.
Tonik's approach is so weird in comparison to other health plans that it was even the source of a sketch on The Daily Show when it was launched in 2005.
Although Simon admits Tonik’s advertising is effective, he has mixed feelings about it.
“It’s pretty condescending to make young people feel more comfortable with health insurance by using certain graphics and taglines. A health insurance provider is not something you need to feel automatically comfortable with—it’s something you need to understand.”
Now that Simon understands the fine print, he’s looking to switch to a plan with better coverage. But until then, like so many Americans, he’ll have to settle for health insurance that’s just good enough.
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