"People my age don't have insurance," La Morgese says. "We can't afford it."
Her parents' insurance covered her as a youth, and an adequate health insurance plan for students got her through studies at Columbia University. She'll head off to medical school in the fall and hopes to find health insurance as a student again. But for now, as a young working woman, she can't find a company that will sell her insurance for a price she can afford.
That's not uncommon, according to a 2002 Institute of Medicine report called "Health Insurance is a Family Matter." Researchers found that the age at which most young people leave home -- and are dropped from their parents' health plans -- is also the age at which they're at highest risk of being uninsured. In 2002, the uninsured rate for people 18 to 20 was 24.2%, climbing to more than 30% for those age 21 to 24, before dropping to 17% for people age 25 to 34.
"I'm a 29-year-old educated woman," La Morgese says. "I have a master's degree in forensic psychology, and when I'm sick, I get care at a free clinic. It's horrible, and I don't know what the answer is."
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GWEN LAUTERBACH
FOR 14 years, Gwen Lauterbach, 59, has been in a state of marital limbo, separated but not divorced. She's continued that lifestyle, with the amicable cooperation of her estranged husband, for as long as she has not because of inertia, ambivalence or religion. "We've stayed married so that I could have health insurance," she says.
When they decided to split in 1992, Lauterbach was not working and was insured through her husband's policy. The jobs she had held included freelance writing gigs, which don't come with health insurance, and positions with small, nonprofit organizations, notorious for budgets too stretched to provide employees with coverage.
"I probably could have found some kind of job, but it wouldn't have come with insurance. So we just drifted along this way and didn't bother with divorce," she says.
Until about three years ago, the fear of going without coverage was largely hypothetical. Then, at 56, she had a stroke. "It was this weird, out-of-the-blue thing. One side of my face started twitching. And that side of my body felt like I was coming out of Novocain," she says.
Now her medical history, a pre-existing condition, renders her uninsurable on the individual market.
