Saturday, November 24, 2001

Disaster Gives the Uninsured Wider Access to Medicaid
The need for health coverage is a vexing old problem that has become much worse since Sept. 11. Before the attack on the World Trade Center, one of four people in New York City had no health insurance. Since then, layoffs have driven the number far higher, though no precise figures are yet available. As a temporary solution, on Sept. 19, the state began offering four months of disaster-relief Medicaid to all low-income residents of the city, not just those directly affected by the attacks.

In the last six weeks, 75,000 families have applied. Before Sept. 11, typically only 8,000 New Yorkers a month applied for Medicaid, health care experts say.

Health insurance has always been an important part of physical and financial security. But since Sept. 11, as the people who lined up Wednesday morning at the Boerum Hill Medicaid office explained, it has become something far more elemental, a life's necessity in a city now preoccupied with death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/nyregion/23INSU.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

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