Doctors Says Patients Can't Wait Until 2014

By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer
The Augusta Chronicle
March 24,2010

Sometimes, as she sleeps, Janie Padgett will stop breathing for up to 20 seconds and wake in the morning tired from constant sleep disruptions. While a sleep study diagnosed her problem, she can't afford the machine that would provide constant air pressure to treat her sleep apnea. She is also battling arthritis and depression.

"These things affect me, and I'm really not getting all of the care that I need to get," she said.

Padgett, a part-time substitute teacher for the Richmond County Board of Education, is like many uninsured patients who must hunt among assistance programs to get their health care needs met but often end up in a gap. Others, such as Tamara Rajah, are happy insurance companies won't be able to use her lupus to deny her coverage again but thinks it should happen sooner than 2014.

For Homer Clark, the legislation could start closing the "doughnut hole" in his Medicare Part D coverage that sucked $4,000 last year out of his family's bank account.

AS PRESIDENT OBAMA was signing health care reform legislation in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Padgett was sitting on an exam table at Belle Terrace Health and Wellness Center talking with Dr. Angela Overstreet-Wright, who is helping her file a disability claim for her arthritis.

"This is the shoulder where you're having a problem?" Overstreet-Wright asked, kneading Padgett's left shoulder.

"This is the shoulder that's giving me fits," she said.

About half of Overstreet-Wright's patients are uninsured, and for many of them it is the little things they can't afford. Many are diabetics, for instance, but can't do the necessary testing to know whether their glucose level is under control because they lack glucometers and testing supplies, she said.

"Somebody will have Diabetes Day and give you a glucometer and they won't give you strips (for testing)," Overstreet-Wright said. "Everybody gives you a glucometer; some people have seven, 10 glucometers; they can't get the strips."

Or rescue inhalers for asthmatics. A mandated change in the propellant used in inhalers meant companies stopped making the generic versions, Overstreet-Wright said. Walmart sells a $9 inhaler. but others retail for at least $50. Or it is a visit to a specialist, which the center is trying to wrangle for a patient with suspected bone cancer.

"How long do you want to wait when you know you have something bad on an X ray?" she asked.

THE LEGISLATION sets up a high-risk pool for coverage within 90 days of enactment, and Overstreet-Wright suspects her patients likely would go into that coverage pool. Within six months, it will also prohibit denying children coverage because of pre-existing conditions -- but the prohibition for adults won't kick in until 2014. That's a long time to Rajah, the chief executive officer of Skip to My Lupus support group in Augusta, who has seen it used against her clients.

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