For three weeks, Khary A. Matthews has watched fellow patients come and go in a three-bed ward at Howard University Hospital, where he says he was recovering from a seizure and meningitis. Like 50 million people nationwide, Matthews is uninsured—a situation that could be eased under the Affordable Care Act.
Besides lacking insurance, Matthews knows firsthand that the unemployment rate for African Americans has been twice the national average. He was laid off from his teaching job at a charter school. He has reached the marrow of his “bare bones” budget.
“The bills come in a shovel and go out in a teaspoon,” Matthews says, quoting his grandmother. The 35-year-old actor cut back on plays and movies, sold his 2006 Audi, switched to public transportation and signed up for food stamps. “I’m not ashamed of it,” he said. “I’ve seen people with more degrees than me in line.”
The scary part was giving up his insurance. He said he paid about $30 a month for insurance through his job, but $400 under COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which allows temporary coverage under an employer’s group health coverage. Being sick worries him. He had another scare when he was hit by a car while riding his bike and ended up on the windshield. That’s when the seizures started, he said.
“I’ll be out grocery shopping, and I’ll find myself in the back of an ambulance,” said Matthews, who also blacked out on a Metro rail platform. He hopes to find a roommate who can double as a sentinel in case he blacks out again — and a job with benefits. In the meantime, a social worker is helping him apply for Medicaid coverage.
Some people can’t get insurance through their jobs. Studies show many can’t afford the premiums or they squeeze out coverage for their children, but not for themselves. Most of the uninsured are in working families; 61 percent have at least one person with a full-time job and another 16 percent have someone working part time, according to a 2010 analysis by the Kaiser Commission.
Among single people, the insurance gap is concentrated at the bottom but cuts across income. About 25 percent of uninsured singles earned less than $25,000 in 2008, reports Families USA. However, 8.2 percent took home $75,000 or more.
It wasn’t always this way. From 1968 to 1980, the majority of Americans under 65 had some type of private insurance. As more and more companies began to cut back on coverage, those with insurance fell from 79 percent to 67 percent in 2007, according to a half-century analysis by the National Center for Health Statistics. Employer-sponsored coverage dropped from 71 percent to 62 percent during this period. It’s now at 57 percent, the Kaiser Commission reports.—Yanick Rice Lamb