If you are without health insurance, you need to know about The Asclepius Initiative

Dr. Susan Bornstein, the Founder and CEO of The Asclepius Initiative, discusses the need for everyone to have adequate health care coverage and how those without it in the Commonwealth can get it...

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right, we're going to makea new friend on the show. I
like making new friends. Doctor SusanBornstein is well, it's hello and welcome.
Hi Terry, thank you for havingme. It is good to have
you here. A mutual friend ofours contacted me and told me you've got
an important project we need to educatepeople about. And I thought, that's
what this radio shows for. Knowledgeis power. All right. Apparently I

(00:22):
was reading some of these figures thatmy friend sent me. Lacey in a
state where more than three hundred thousandindividuals under the age of sixty five remain
uninsured and an additional two hundred andforty thousand are at risk of losing their
Medicaid coverage. The Esclepius Initiative isyour project. You're the founder, correct,
That is correct? Tell me whatthe Esclepias Initiative is. Well,

(00:47):
it's a nonprofit five OHO one Cthree organization that is devoted to connecting the
dots between what the evident shows aboutthe benefits of a healthcare system that would
cover everyone from birth until death andwhat people generally believe about such a system.
Are we not pumping out enough informationor is it incorrect information? Or

(01:10):
people just did their eyes glaze overwhen they start hearing things and they lose
their attention span. I think it'sa little bit of all of those things,
and it's an incredibly complicated problem,and it's also colored by political ideology.
Health insurance should not or health carecoverage should not be political, but
unfortunately, as we have seen inthe current environment, almost everything is political.

(01:34):
But I think that everybody needs tohave adequate health care coverage, regardless
of where they're coming from. Okay, so what are you doing to address
these challenges that we were just talkingabout, the number, the incredible number
of people who are not finding theproper insurance. Well, we've done two
things so far. So the firstthing that we did is conducted a survey

(01:55):
of a thousand adult Kentuckians looking attheir attitudes and beliefs about the US health
care deliveries stem and willingness to entertainalternate delivery models. And one of the
key things that we found is thateighty six percent of uninsured Kentuckians, but
as many as two thirds of insuredKentuckians had to go without medical care and

(02:15):
medications secondary to cost. So evenif you have health insurance, copays,
deductibles, co insurance, out ofpocket maximums and the like present a barrier
to getting the care that they need. So trying to get some of that
information out there is one thing thestate legislature. Can they be of help

(02:36):
to you? It's I would liketo think that they could. I mean,
certainly they could be more supportive ofthe idea, but ultimately, this
is a federal issue that federal ruleshave to change. So then tell me
how your group works with community partnersto make health care coverage more understandable.
That's the thing is boiling it downto us in a simplistic form. Yeah,

(03:00):
I think anybody who's ever had anyinteraction with the healthcare system can attest
to how complex it is. Andwe have received a grant from the Kentucky
Department of Public Health's Office of HealthEquity to do health care coverage literacy education,
so helping people, which I knowis a mouthful, but helping people
to understand or know more about whatkinds of coverage do you qualify for?

(03:23):
Do you do you qualify for Medicare? Do you qualify for Medicaid? If
you're looking at plans on the marketplace, what are some things to think about
when buying health insurance and helping todecode some of the terminology that was used
every year when we sign up forour company stuff. Here, it's like
I feel like Cocoa the gorilla nowwhere they just they put up these choices

(03:45):
in colored boxes and I go,oh, that looks good. It's like
it's like almost I don't even wantto dive into it. I've been doing
this for over thirty years and itstill takes me hours to figure out which
plan is going to best meet myneeds, especially when you're dealing with you
know, what medical problems do youhave? Now? You might know,
but you don't know what's going tohappen in the next year. So if
you knew you were going to gethit by a bus, you might pick

(04:08):
one kind of insurance. But ifyou knew you weren't going to have any
kind of health problems at all,you might say, well, I don't
need any health insurance at all.Or I might pick one with a really
high deductible and very low premiums.But we don't know, and so trying
to make that decision in a veryunknown landscape is what we want to help
people. Sure, what do wewant to say to people who are uninsured
who are listening to us right now, and it's almost like it's this ominous

(04:30):
sort of I don't even want totry to tread that minefield. What's the
best thing you can say to someoneto get them to come and discover Well,
gosh, there's a lot. Butwe know that people who are uninsured
and typically have less care, theypresent later in the course of the disease,
they don't get preventive care. Soit's definitely from a health standpoint,

(04:54):
not such a great idea to beuninsured. But the other thing is about
two thirds of bankruptcies in the UnitedStates are due to medical costs or time
off work due to medication so ortime off work due to illness excuse me.
So not having health insurance is reallydangerous from both a health status standpoint
and a financial standpoint. So wheredo we send people to learn more so

(05:15):
they can take it in at theirown pace. We have a website which
actually has a toolkit on the healthliteracy or health educate healthcare coverage information,
and you can find us at wwwdot all in all ensured dot org.
Oh that's good, That's better thantrying to spell Asclepias. It is exactly.

(05:38):
I was afraid of having to spellthat on the radios, so Asclepias
is the Greek god of medicine andhealing. So I couldn't bear the idea
of having an one more organization withthe words Kentucky and health in them because
I can't keep them straight. Soinstead I named the organization something that you

(05:59):
can spell, can't say, andcan't remember. So go figure love the
sound of it. You'll recognize itif you see it again. All right,
tell me your website one more time. Www. Dot all in all
insured, dot org, all inall Insured dot org. Susan, great
to meet you. Thank you somuch for having me. Happy to come
back at anytime. Okay, mynew best friend dog, Susan Bornstein back

(06:21):
in a few You're on news radioeight forty whas