Healing Our System
By: Patricia Barry and Barbara Basler Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: March 2007
Sarita Scarbrough, 38, of Houston is a bright, ambitious woman whose entrepreneurial impulse is so strong that nine years ago she quit a secure government job to start her own business—and has been without health insurance ever since.
"I don't like taking that risk and doing without health insurance," she says. "But the cost [of insurance she priced] was incredibly high. I just couldn't afford it."
Her situation isn't uncommon: One in every five women ages 18 to 64 is uninsured, and women are less likely than men—by 38 percent to 50 percent—to have job-based insurance, says a new Kaiser Family Foundation study.
Scarbrough now runs a small printing business at home and works full time as an office manager for a manufacturing company that doesn't provide insurance. "I'm still working to make my business grow, to add to my skills, to be a success."
Meanwhile, she tries to stay healthy and goes to the doctor only when she's "really, really sick." Like the time she was so ill that she went to an emergency room for treatment. "In a week or so I got a bill for more than $1,000," she says. "It's taken me months to pay that off."
Scarbrough says she is "a good citizen who works hard, pays taxes and Social Security and still has no insurance. Nobody wants to walk around uninsured. But lights, food and gas are important, too, and that's the choice."
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