Jennifer Thomas, Scott City junior, pays $950 a month in private family insurance because she has a son with a disability. Amy Lindgren, Houston junior, doesn’t have personal health insurance at all.

“I could pay the $340 a month, but it doesn’t make any sense,” Lindgren said. “I just go to Watkins.”

Thomas and Lindgren attended a forum at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries Center Wednesday, which addressed the American health care system and privatized insurance.

David Goering, a physician at Lawrence Memorial Hospital and president of Kansas Health Care for All, said that Lindgren was among many Americans who risk living without insurance, but overall, Americans paid heavily for these risks.

Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States ranks the lowest in life expectancy and the highest in infant mortality, Goering said.

He said he worked with the uninsured patients daily and could see the crisis in its trenches, right here in Lawrence.

“This is not only a crisis at the poverty level,” Goering said, “but it has really hit the middle class.”

Goering said that more than 47 million Americans lacked health care coverage and that about 80 percent of those uninsured people were employed.

The pr’oblem, he said, was that private insurance companies were using America’s health problems as an opportunity for profit rather than caring about individual people. Goering said people should ask whether health care was a human right or a privilege.

Thomas said that she would like to find a cheaper plan, but her son just doesn’t qualify for any.

“When they find out he has a disability, they immediately deny the application,” Thomas said.

Thomas said that a few years ago she was denied personal insurance because she was classified as obese. Obese was described as being anything more than 135 pounds for her height, about 5-foot-5. According to the Center for Disease Control, Thomas’ insurance provider’s standard for obesity rates a 22.5 on the body mass index. The CDC recommends that a body mass of 24.9 is still within the healthy limits of an adult. While Americans like Thomas continue to be denied basic coverage, CEO’s from insurance companies continue to benefit.

Individuals attending the talk gasped when they learned how much money insurance company CEO’s earned while middle class families were being denied basic health care.

In 2005, United Health CEO William McGuire made upward of $37 million annually. He resigned in 2006 because of stock fraud, but his exit compensation was $1.1 billion.

Lindgren said that individuals without private health insurance ended up having to pay more because the insurance companies get bargains from health care providers that the individuals can’t get.

“I actually tried to negotiate once. I told them I would pay what the insurance companies get to pay,” Lindgren said. “They looked at me like I was crazy.”

Thomas said she couldn’t believe that the government has let insurance companies take advantage of Americans for this long.

She said that when her mother had surgery, her mother was covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield. After the procedure, Blue Cross said her mother was not covered completely because her physician did not have a contract with them. The operation cost $65,000. Blue Cross cut her a check for only $6,000 because that was how much Blue Cross would have negotiated to pay the physician.

Making a change in how the American system works is not an easy process, Goering said. The Clinton administration tried and failed in the early ’90s to implement a national health care system. Meanwhile, the cost of insurance has risen exponentially, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.

Goering said that the cost of insurance was mostly administrative. Insurance companies have hired 2,500 percent more administrators since 1970, while the number of physicians has only grown 160 percent. So Americans are paying nearly 40 percent in insurance administrative costs before they even start paying for actual medical procedures, Goering said. He said that health care should not be a for-profit business. Goering said with a national health care plan, the government could not discriminate who they gave coverage to, and since it would be non-profit, people would not pay more than necessary.

“Physicians would no longer focus on what the patient can afford, but what they need for the long run,” Goering said.

Goering said that government health care would allow people to take care of health issues at the first sign instead of waiting until it gets so serious that they cannot ignore it. Americans are not inclined to take on a health care system like Canada or Great Britain, Goering said, because many American’s believe it is not the government’s responsibility.

Referring to other nations’ health care systems, Goering said, “No other industrial nation has decided to adopt a national system and then switched back.”

—Edited by Mandy Earles