Hello, all.  Please read this message and attachment.  Ms. Lauren Pabst is seeking our assistance in locating any of our retirees who might still be below the age of 65 and not yet eligible for medicare coverage and who might be dealing with a chronic illness or a medical emergency.  As she states, they are looking for people in the metro New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Austin, TX.  As you will see when reading, their time frame is the next two weeks even though the show probably will not show until 2008.

 

Anything you can do to identify people in this category will be appreciated.  As most of us remember, the bankruptcy court in the early 1990's allowed Western Union to stop contributing to health care coverage for retirees.  Unfortunately, we all are ( I think) too old to be of interest for this article.  I am asking both John Wilkinson and Harold Smith to post the letter and attachments on the two web-sites (westernunionretirees.com) and westernunionalumni.com).

 

I don't know if we can find any suitable subjects within their timeframe, but Western Union was one of the "pioneers" in what has now become a flood of similar rulings and decisions to cut health care costs for retirees.  As companies always point out: "the company reserves the right to: 'blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum".  If we do find someone who fits their criteria, then it would be appropriate for Western union to be memorialized in their broadcast! 

 

Thank you for your attention and best wishes for a wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

 

With best regards, Jack Durkin   

Money and Medicine

 

The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 18,000 Americans between the ages 25 and 64 die unnecessarily every year for no other reason than that they lack health insurance. Children die unnecessarily from pertussis, rheumatic fever, and even asthma. Women die during childbirth from preventable complications, and their babies die from conditions that easily could have been treated if their mothers had access to prenatal care. And, adults often die prematurely from cancers that could have been diagnosed and treated if routine medical care were accessible. In all, uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely than insured adults to die prematurely. The more than 18,000 Americans who die unnecessarily each year are the most dramatic and tragic victims of our current health insurance crisis, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. During a recent two-year period, 81.8 million people – one out of every three people under 65 years of age – were uninsured at some point in time, and 65 percent of those people lived without insurance for 6 months or more. At the moment, 45 million people, 1 in 7 Americans, lack health insurance. In just the last year alone an additional 1.4 million Americans lost insurance. Estimates are that between 48 million and 61 million Americans will lack health insurance by the end of the decade. In order to grasp the pace of this disturbing trend, consider that during the broadcast of MONEY AND MEDICINE, 465 people will lose health insurance.

MONEY AND MEDICINE will put a human face on the health insurance crisis by following six uninsured patients - representatives of distinctly different groups of the uninsured - as they cope with serious illness over a two-year period.  The subjects include a child cut from the rolls of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a low wage worker whose company does not offer health insurance, a parent whose policy does not cover dependents, a recently unemployed worker who cannot afford to maintain insurance coverage, a self-employed uninsured worker who gambles on staying healthy, and a recent retiree whose former employer has cut health benefits.

As medical costs continue to soar, putting health insurance out of reach for increasing numbers of Americans, the health care crisis will undoubtedly become one of the most hotly debated issues in the 2008 presidential election, and that’s precisely when MONEY AND MEDICINE will reach millions of viewers on national public television. Since people are uninsured for different reasons, it is likely that any meaningful reform will offer different solutions for different groups of the uninsured. By highlighting the access barriers that must be eliminated for distinctly different groups of the uninsured, we believe that MONEY AND MEDICINE can make a significant contribution to the public debate in an election year. The film will not presume to prescribe a specific cure for the nation’s health insurance problem. That job belongs to our elected officials and all the stakeholders in the health care arena. However, MONEY AND MEDICINE can play a catalytic role in this important debate by laying out the problems that must be addressed.

Over the past two decades we’ve produced twenty-five PBS documentaries that have won over a hundred awards, including Emmy, Peabody, and duPont-Columbia awards, and most recently, two Academy Award nominations. MONEY AND MEDICINE will continue the health policy reporting that distinguished our previous productions including, SOUND AND FURY, BORDERLINE MEDICINE, OUR CHILDREN AT RISK, WHO LIVES WHO DIES, CAN'T AFFORD TO GROW OLD, HEALTH CARE ON THE CRITICAL LIST, and WHAT'S AILING MEDICINE. By chronicling the struggles of a diverse group of uninsured people coping with serious illness and disease, MONEY AND MEDICINE will build on our previous reporting, exposing the human dimensions of the nation’s health insurance crisis.