Dr. Raymond Higbea has been involved in public health education and action for<\/p>\n
years; he has taught all of the health care administration courses at WMU for the past<\/p>\n
five years, and before that taught at Cornerstone University for two years. Dr. Higbea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/p>\n
doctoral research addressed access to health care by the uninsured, and he has<\/p>\n
been involved in this issue for over 10 years. Dr. Higbea joined the Enroll Kalamazoo<\/p>\n
Community Outreach initiative (as well as a coalition based in Calhoun County) and<\/p>\n
became involved in organizing official enrollment events in both counties.<\/p>\n
Of the planning and execution of the Kalamazoo enrollment events themselves,<\/p>\n
Dr. Higbea said they appeared to be on the whole successful. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The biggest issues were<\/p>\n
the computer issues,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. Dr. Highbea estimated that at least 1,000 people were<\/p>\n
brought into the enrollment events and successfully signed up for health insurance.<\/p>\n
And while a possible 11,000 more uninsured residents remain eligible in Kalamazoo for<\/p>\n
insurance under the ACA, Dr. Higbea believes that managing to recruit that number of<\/p>\n
people at these events was a big achievement, as, in his opinion, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Enroll America and<\/p>\n
Enroll Michigan did little\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in actually bringing people to register. The success came from<\/p>\n
the local level, according to Dr. Higbea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Juxtaposing the apparent success of the enrollment events, however, was Dr.<\/p>\n
Higbea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attitude concerning the actual effects the ACA is going to have on increasing<\/p>\n
access to health care. In his opinion, no real net increase in access to care will actually<\/p>\n
be achieved through the ACA, as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the uninsured aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always the poor; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of<\/p>\n
small-business owners and professionals.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In Dr. Higbea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view, the majority of those<\/p>\n
who are actually gaining health care through the ACA are people who had been<\/p>\n
enrolled in a health insurance plan before, but had decided to give it up due to high<\/p>\n
premiums. Therefore, the people who are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153newly insured\u00e2\u20ac\u009d under the ACA are those<\/p>\n
who still could afford health care before, but simply had co-pays and premiums that<\/p>\n
were too high to make it worth paying for health insurance each month. He cited the<\/p>\n
immense success of the Portage, Michigan enrollment event as an example of this<\/p>\n
phenomenon, as the majority of those attending were part of the middle class — in other<\/p>\n
words, people whose main cause for celebration was not the possibility of accessing<\/p>\n
health care, but at doing so at a lower price than before. For a great proportion of those<\/p>\n
who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but are still struggling economically, Dr.<\/p>\n
Higbea feels the ACA is not truly helping them to gain access to health care, as cost<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153barriers [like]\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the copays and deductibles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will most likely cause them to decline<\/p>\n
enrollment or drop out of their new insurance plans.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While Dr. Higbea was skeptical as to the extent the ACA has had thus far on<\/p>\n
increasing access to health care, he did seem to believe that the country is on a positive<\/p>\n
trajectory concerning health and health care thanks to the new law. While public<\/p>\n
opinion concerning the ACA is still fairly negative, he feels that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sentiment is turning<\/p>\n
from \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcrepeal and replace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcrepair.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However bumpy the implementation of the ACA<\/p>\n
has been, Dr. Higbea believes that this more universal approach at increasing access to<\/p>\n
health services cannot simply be dissipated by policy makers in the future. As he<\/p>\n
concluded, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the framework [for a better health system] is there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An interview with Dr. Raymond Higbea, who has taught all of the health care administration courses at WMU for the past five years, and before that taught at Cornerstone University for two years. Dr. Higbea also did his doctoral research on access to health care and the uninsured, and joined the Enroll Kalamazoo Community Outreach initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}