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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > 63K IN SONOMA COUNTY LACK HEALTH INSURANCE
Article published - Sept. 22, 2009
Credit: PRESS DEMOCRAT
63,000 in Sonoma County lack health insurance; rates worse in Lake and Mendocino
by Guy Kovner
Nearly 63,000 Sonoma County residents lacked health insurance last year, a rate of 13.6 percent that is lower than both the state and national averages, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
In neighboring Mendocino and Lake counties, the uninsured rate was well over 20 percent, leading local officials and insurance experts to equate public health coverage with public wealth.
“A $50,000-a-year job generally comes with health insurance; a $15,000 to $20,000 job generally does not,” said David Hodges, a Santa Rosa health insurance broker.
Dr. Mary Maddux-Gonzalez, Sonoma County public health officer, said the county, state and national rates of the uninsured are “unacceptably high.”
“We are the only industrialized country that does not provide universal access to care,” she said.
The nearly 63,000 uninsured people in Sonoma County are “a significant problem for the health of our community,” Maddux-Gonzalez said.
Mendocino County’s economic slump, including the collapse of the fishing and lumber industries, has generated a crisis in health care, said Stacey Cryer, the county director of public health.
The high rate of the uninsured, pegged by the Census at 20.7 percent, is “one of the biggest problems we face in Mendocino County,” she said.
A chronic shortage of physicians exacerbates Mendocino’s health care woes, she said.
Sonoma County’s relatively low rate of uninsured people is largely a product of the county’s affluence, dented by “pockets of poverty,” said Kathie Powell, chief executive officer of the Petaluma Health Center.
Sonoma County’s median household income of $62,238 a year is higher than the income for Mendocino ($43,205) and Lake ($40,538), according to the Census.
Sonoma’s median income is larger and its uninsured rate is lower than the national levels ($52,029 a year and 15.1 percent uninsured).
The Census tally of 62,860 people without health insurance is dramatically higher than the 38,000 uninsured in Sonoma County cited by the California Health Interview Survey in 2007, a year earlier than the Census survey.
Powell said the discrepancy speaks to the difficulty of accurately measuring health insurance coverage. Even the definition of uninsured is “really ambiguous,” she said, noting that an increasing number of health center patients have insurance with annual deductibles of $1,000 or more.
People who must pay that much out of pocket before their insurance kicks in are “less likely to get regular medical care,” Powell said.
“Health care access is what’s important,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Health care costs can’t be reined in unless nearly everyone is insured, said Hodges, the insurance broker. The insurance mandate included in Sen. Max Baucus’ health care overhaul bill is the right approach, he said.
“You’ve got to have it,” Hodges said, referring to insurance for all.
Meanwhile, Sonoma County’s uninsured rate has likely worsened this year because of job layoffs in construction and auto sales, Hodges said.
Dr. Richard Powers, a Sebastopol physician and Sonoma County Medical Association president, questioned whether the Census report accurately reflected the county’s population of migrant workers, who he said have high rates of unemployment, low rates of insurance and are typically undercounted by the Census.
And the county’s nearly 63,000 uninsured are “a tragedy,” Powers said, because many delay getting medical care.
“Sometimes they get sicker,” he said. “Occasionally, people die because they don’t go get help when they should have.”
The pervasively low rates of uninsured people 65 and over — 1.2 percent in Sonoma County; 1.4 percent nationwide — are the result of Medicare’s wide reach, officials said.
“You turn 65, you’re a U.S. citizen, you have Medicare,” Hodges said.
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