Pinnacle wire service
Researchers issued yet another grim statistic Monday on the toll
of the recession: 2 million additional Californians
– nearly 5,000 of them in San Benito County – lost their health
care coverage during the recent economic slide.
As a result, difficult decisions are playing out in living rooms
and across kitchen tables as families struggle with joblessness and
tighter finances, according to the authors of a new UCLA study that
gives a county-by-county account of the state’s swelling numbers of
uninsured, now estimated at 8 million.
Pinnacle wire service
Researchers issued yet another grim statistic Monday on the toll of the recession: 2 million additional Californians – nearly 5,000 of them in San Benito County – lost their health care coverage during the recent economic slide.
As a result, difficult decisions are playing out in living rooms and across kitchen tables as families struggle with joblessness and tighter finances, according to the authors of a new UCLA study that gives a county-by-county account of the state’s swelling numbers of uninsured, now estimated at 8 million.
In San Benito County, nearly 26 percent of the non-elderly population went uninsured at some point last year, compared with 19.5 percent in 2007, according to the study by the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Health Policy Research.
In 2007, 10,335 people in San Benito County went uninsured all or part of the year, the study showed. Last year, nearly 15,000 local residents lacked insurance at some point of the year.
Despite the ongoing federal overhaul of the health care system, relief for many of the newly uninsured won’t arrive anytime soon. Key provisions of the landmark legislation, including subsidies for purchasing health insurance through state-run exchanges and the expansion of Medi-Cal, won’t be available until at least 2014.
“Job loss, foreclosures, and a loss of insurance coverage have combined in many areas of the state to make families vulnerable to prolonged financial as well as health problems,” the study states.
UCLA researchers estimate that 24.3 percent of Californians under the age of 65 were uninsured at some point last year, compared with 19.4 percent two years prior. The statistic translates to nearly 2 million additional Californians having gone without health coverage since the start of the recession.
“We now know that the crisis of people losing health insurance is not limited to any one area. This is a problem in every California county,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group.
From Siskiyou County in the north state to Imperial County on the Mexican border, the recession has cut into the health care safety net – particularly in rural areas, such as the San Joaquin and upper Sacramento valleys.
Urban areas, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, had higher rates of insured residents – although Los Angeles County was a notable exception, with 2.7 million non-elderly residents, or 28.9 percent of its population, going without health insurance at some period in 2009.
“The recession has been going on for so long, and the scary part is that the unemployment rate is still about 12 percent,” said UCLA’s Lavarreda. “When you’re suddenly on an extremely tight budget, it comes down as a choice between buying groceries or buying prescription drugs.”
The Sacramento Bee contributed to this report.
