Mar 7, 2009 8:14 am US/Eastern
Proactive Steps To Get Patients Health Care
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
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The Susan G. Komen for the Cure tries to educate and also find ways to prevent breast cancer.
CBS
Being uninsured in America is a risky business. Forty-six-million Americans are without health insurance. As fewer employers offer healthcare benefits, more people struggle to buy insurance directly from providers but the cost of premiums has soared more than 10 per cent every year for the past decade.
A 2005 study showed that patients without health insurance received 20 per cent less treatment in hospitals and were 37 per cent more likely to die of their injuries than the insured.
One example of the pain of not having health-care insurance is illustrated by Nadja Infanti and her husband who moved to South Florida last August to live with family. They have college degrees and believed it would not be difficult to find jobs.
"It's never been a problem in the past for us to find work and to be productive," explained Nadja Infanti. "This has been the first time where we could not."
Nadja has since lost her health insurance, something many Americans are going through.
Robert Glass is executive director, Community Health Center, "We're seeing probably 100-plus patients a week for all types of needs. They are folks who are underinsured or uninsured, folks who have been affected by the economy. We have a steady flow of patients all the time."
Women with a family history of breast cancer cannot go without health care.
"I have a lot of breast cancer in my family," said Nadja. "My sister, my mother's mother, my great aunt, etc. I'm at the age where I can be vulnerable to it."
The Susan G. Komen For The Cure sends patients like Nadja to various centers across the country to undergo necessary medical tests for free.
"We see a great need and with the economic changes now, it is pretty much on the rise that people don't have insurance,"explained Diane Stauffer, a nurse practitioner.
"If a patient does have cancer then we also have the ability to do funding through the Breast Health Navigator at one of the hospitals," she added.
For people like Nadja, organizations that provide services for the uninsured may be the only way they can get the medical care they need.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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