Why national health care is a top priority

'When a job disappears, so does the health care'

This is terrifying. Full story here.

ASHLAND, Ohio: As jobless numbers reach levels not seen in 25 years, another crisis is unfolding for millions of people who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, joining the ranks of the uninsured.

The crisis is on display here. Starla Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

Wendy Carter, 41, who recently lost her job and her health benefits, is struggling to pay $12,942 in bills for a partial hysterectomy at a local hospital. Her daughter, Betsy Carter, 19, has pain in her lower right jaw, where a wisdom tooth is growing in. But she has not seen a dentist because she has no health insurance.

Darling and Wendy Carter are among 275 people who worked at an Archway cookie factory here in north central Ohio. The company provided excellent health benefits. But the plant shut down abruptly this fall, leaving workers without coverage, like millions of people battered by the worst economic crisis since the Depression. . . .

"This shows why — no matter how bad the condition of the economy — we can't delay pursuing comprehensive health care," said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. "There are too many victims who are innocent of anything but working at the wrong place at the wrong time." . . .

Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin Phillips, worked there for 24 years.

"When I heard that I was losing my insurance," she said, "I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son's delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself."

So Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.

"I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for," said Darling, who was interviewed at her home here as she cradled the infant in her arms.

As it turned out, the insurance company denied her claim, leaving Darling with more than $17,000 in medical bills. . . .

M. Harvey Brenner, a professor of public health at the University of North Texas and Johns Hopkins University, said that three decades of research had shown a correlation between the condition of the economy and human health, including life expectancy. . . .