Anyone who thinks our health care system doesn’t need an overhaul hasn’t looked at Washington state’s Basic Health Plan lately. Or visited a clinic like Country Doctor Community Clinic on Capitol Hill, where I was yesterday afternoon.
And anyone on the waiting list for the Basic Health Plan – now bigger than the number actually enrolled – must not have been among those polled to make Washington the seventh happiest state in the country, according to a Gallup Poll. But that’s another story.
About 80,000 people are now waiting to get on Basic Health, the state’s subsidized plan for the working poor. About 65,000 people are currently enrolled in the plan, paying an average of $34 a month, with the state paying the remaining 85 percent of the premiums. Beginning in January, members will pay an average of $60 a month, or 25 percent of the total premium.
Already, budget cuts have forced tens of thousands of people off Basic Health. And because it receives no federal dollars, the program faces even deeper cuts with the $2.6 billion budget gap the state now faces. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell has inserted an amendment in the Senate health care reform bill that would rescue the plan, but even if that bill passes, the money wouldn’t flow until 2014, Kyung M.
