On Top of 47 Million Americans with No Health Coverage, Underinsured Present a Strong Case for Reform

Reported by Michelle Miller

(CBS) President Obama will be promoting health care reform this week in Virginia and North Carolina, and plans to keep the pressure on Congress during next month’s recess. One argument for health care reform is that 47 million Americans are uninsured.

But not everyone knows that another 25 million are underinsured as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports.

John Stewardson is up at dawn, working for the local 602 union in Washington, D.C. But by 11:30 a.m., he’s home fixing lunch for his ailing wife Linda, a cancer survivor.

“I’m just going to have to take medicine for the rest of my life,” she said.

Diagnosed with a brain tumor last summer, she’s in remission. Now it’s her family’s financial health at stake. In March, their healthcare insurance capped-out at $150,000 of treatment, minimum coverage by industry standards.

The cost of treating cancer and its side effects demolished their life savings.

“It’s like she fell out a cancer tree and hit every branch on the way down,” John Stewardson said.

They owe more than $100,000 in medical bills.

Dr. Deepa Subramaniam is counseling more and more patients like Linda - forced to decide which treatments are worth the cost.

“I am trying to balance cost and effectiveness in her case,” Subramaniam said. “You worry that somehow by choosing a treatment that is less expensive, that we are compromising the quality of the care.”

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is leading the effort to push the affordable health choices act through the Senate. He supports a government insurance plan that eliminates lifetime and annual caps on all healthcare plans.

“The underinsured are a critical group,” Dodd told Miller. “In some cases 53 percent don’t know they’re underinsured. So they either have a huge co-pay if the problem happens or the deductibles being so high they might as well not have insurance.”

The Stewardsons were only offered one plan by the union - which left them uninsured after they reached the cap.

John calls his union and the Medicare offices every day, asking for supplemental coverage. He’s had no luck so far.

Linda knows John’s doing his best.

“He has to cook dinner, clean the house, get up and get me breakfast, help bathe me,” she said.

She just wishes her healthcare was as dependable.

Photo Courtesy of Oprah.com

By Jean Chatzky with Arielle McGowen

What do you get when you combine a rocky job market with soaring student debt? Student loan defaults—now at the highest level in more than a decade.

That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. This year’s grads are facing hiring freezes, and many of last year’s have been laid off or are still struggling to find well-paying jobs.

But the news isn’t all bad: Big changes were made this month to the federal student loan programs, and they’re going to be a huge boon not only to recent grads, but to current students as well.

Here’s what you need to know.

Lower Payments

The biggest change is a new repayment option called income-based repayment. It will cap your monthly federal student loan payment based on income and family size. If you make less than one and a half times the federal poverty level for your family size, your payment will be zero (check the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ website at HHS.gov to see if you qualify). Anything more will be regarded as discretionary income, and your monthly student loan payment will be 15 percent of that amount.

If the math sounds complicated, here’s a good rule of thumb from Edie Irons, communications director of the Project on Student Debt: “If you owe more in student loans than you make in a year, you very likely qualify. It’s designed for people with a high debt burden in relation to their income. So the less income you have, the less you have to owe in student loans to qualify.”

Anyone with a federal student loan is eligible, no matter who your lender is or when you got your loan. To learn about your options, contact your lender.

If it seems like you’ll be repaying forever, you won’t. After 25 years, any remaining balance is forgiven. That means that, although you’ll accrue more interest by stretching your repayment period with lower monthly payments, it may not matter.

Lower Rates

You may now have a lower interest rate. If you have a variable-rate Stafford loan—you do if you got the loan before July 1, 2006—your interest rate resets annually on July 1 as long as you haven’t consolidated. This year, the interest rate fell nearly two percentage points to 2.48 percent. Borrowed money doesn’t come much cheaper than that.

New borrowers of subsidized (need-based) Stafford loans also have lower rates: 5.6 percent for 2009–10, compared with 6 percent for 2008–09.

More from Pell

The federal stimulus program boosted the Pell Grant to $5,350 for 2009–10. “That’s the largest increase in the Pell Grant in the history of the program,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org. Pell Grants are awarded based on need and don’t need to be repaid. In other words: free money. To find out if you’re eligible, you must fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, available at FAFSA.Ed.gov.

Find the Perks

This wasn’t part of the July 1 changes, but is often overlooked: If you work full time in a public service career, your federal Stafford loan, Direct PLUS loan or Direct Consolidation loan will be forgiven after 10 years.

That means you can choose the lowest possible monthly payment—most likely by selecting the new, income-based option—and have the slate wiped clean after 10 years.

by Carolyn Rubenstein

Simply writing this title has decreased my confidence significantly. Yet now that I realize why I feel self-doubt, I can move forward and write this post—my first for the Huffington Post. How incredible it is that in a split second, we can shift our mindset from negative to positive.

Curiously, we rarely use this powerful ability because it’s easier to hit our snooze button and ignore it. We get so good at this that snoozing becomes a reflex action—that is, until we wake up and confront this yucky feeling. About a year ago, I realized that by ignoring this message, I was empowering it and weakening myself. Back then, had someone told me that I would be willing to admit my imperfections, I would have thought it impossible.

So how did I get to this point just a year later? By taking things one day at a time.

I work to overcome the feeling of being “not good enough” by using the following strategies that might work for you as well:

1) Make a Decision

As individuals, we have the incredible power to decide that we are, in fact, good enough. You are the person who owns the sole key to your self-worth, which governs what you do. In order to achieve the feeling of being good enough, you must first believe it. If you choose not to do so, then no one else can do it for you. Write it down and say it to yourself. When you make the choice, you become the decision maker and you are back in power. You hold that key, yet often forget that you do. So remind yourself that when you feel imperfect, you’ve chosen to be imperfect. Of course, perfection is merely a facade that holds us back from moving forward.

You must believe—truly believe—that you are good enough, which will allow you to let go of your quest for perfection.

2) Emphasize the Positive

How often do you quickly dismiss something you did well? Do you allow yourself to recognize and accept praise from others and feel that you deserve it? The frequency of this is likely much less than the amount of time you spend dwelling on something you did wrong or even sub-par. Do you recognize criticism and feel that you deserve it much more than praise?

Always remember that you’re on your side, always.

3) Redefine Perfect

During my freshman year at Duke, I failed my first two exams. I had prepared so much for both exams and can still remember the moment I called my mom after getting an F on my chemistry exam. I thought that I didn’t belong at Duke, that I wasn’t good enough. Ultimately, I graduated from Duke with high honors, and I credit those two exams for my academic success.

I had only known the situation of being “perfect” prior to college, and those tests served as my wakeup call. Perfect was no longer what I wanted. Instead, my first goal distilled into simply passing my exams. When the threat of perfection was lifted, so was the pressure and anxiety I felt while preparing for and taking exams. I also reexamined my expectations. What did I want in the end, just good grades? No, I wanted to become a psychologist. I had a goal and I was going after it.

By releasing the self-assigned pressure of perfection, you will release the corresponding anxiety and allow yourself to perform up to your abilities.

By utilizing these strategies, you too can work to overcome the feeling that you are not good enough. The little voice that pops up at the worst of times and screams, “I am not good enough!” is awful. But while you may feel sometimes that it is easier to silence the voice deep within by hitting your snooze button, you must also realize the importance of the struggle to empower yourself and to value your self-worth at the cost of perfection.

Originally posted on the Huffington Post