Bankruptcy
Young people try to navigate adulthood without insurance
By Katie Campbell
Staff Writer
May 21, 2004
Editor's note: This is the third
story in a periodic series highlighting the growing number of people without health
insurance nationwide. Indian River County residents share their stories of surviving
without coverage
VERO BEACH --
First Mary Rebholz, 25, and Ken Kaplan, 23, found each other. Then the young couple
found employment.
Now they've found an affordable apartment. From
afar, the Vero Beach couple seems to have succeeded in establishing themselves in
the adult world.
But one missing item could change all that.
Health insurance.
Without it, one illness or injury could take a lifetime
to recovery from financially.
Rebholz and Kaplan are two of the millions of young
people who face the precarious health insurance void as part of growing up in the
one industrialized nation without
national health-care coverage. Eighteen- to 24-year-olds
account for just 15 percent of the U.S. population but make up 30 percent of the
country's growing numbers of uninsured, the 2000 U.S. Census reported.
"I think about it all the time. I really do," Rebholz
said, who has severe scoliosis and a history of other medical conditions that could
resurface at any time. Rebholz has not had insurance for more than two years and
isn't likely to be insured anytime soon because coverage isn't offered through her
job as an office assistant for a small Vero Beach chiropractic practice.
"I just keep thinking, 'What if? What if we start
a family early? What if something happens?' If something disastrous happens, your
life is ruined," she said. A regular pregnancy and delivery costs at least $10,000,
said Sarah Gosney, executive director of the Healthy Start Coalition in Martin County.
Any complications can raise the bill dramatically. There's no limit on the dollar
figure of the other "what-ifs" that worry Rebholz.
In December something did happen. Rebholz started
feeling ill and decided she needed to see a family practitioner. "A 5-minute consultation
cost me $172. I was totally taken by surprise," she said. In those 5 minutes, the
doctor recommended some blood tests to look at her cholesterol and calcium levels.
The tests would have cost $1,800.
"That's the down payment of a house," Rebholz exclaimed.
"I can't afford that." She went without the tests and just hoped the illness wasn't
anything terribly serious. So far the young couple has avoided medical catastrophe.
"The reality is that most folks don't have the ability
to weather a siege of medical bills," said
Howard Dvorkin, president of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc. in Fort Lauderdale. "Medical debt can happen overnight.
You can generate thousands upon thousands of dollars."
Filing for bankruptcy is
often the only way out from under a deluge of medical debt, he said. Some have argued, he said, that medical
expenses are the leading cause of the rise in the number of bankruptcy filings,
which is at an all-time high with more than 1.6 million filing last year.
Bankruptcy has consequences, Dvorkin said. It means
a 10-year smudge on a personal credit record visible to potential employers, home-mortgage
loan officers, and automobile and life insurance agencies.
