Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > August > 03
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Martin Gottlieb: One family learns what the health care fight was about
At one stage, the story of Azra and Ratko Kaurin seemed like the great, classic American story.
In the mid-1990s, the couple was forced to flee the Balkans because of the Bosnia war. Theirs was a mixed marriage, as to religious backgrounds. When their homeland became polarized along religious lines, they no longer felt welcome anyplace. And they had two small children.
They ended up in the Dayton area. People tried to help them, but it was rough. Azra had been a newspaper reporter, covering some of the conferences that failed to bring peace. Ratko was a civil engineer. But language problems undercut their marketability in this country.
They would land various entry-level blue-collar jobs — retail, truck driving — some of them temporary and/or part-time. They’d often work more than one at a time.
They persevered, though, and things eventually started coming together. Ratko found a job related to his skills, though at a lower level than in Europe. Azra found that people loved her European cooking. Now, having done catering, operated stalls at festivals and sold cookies to a supermarket chain, she operates a stall at the 2nd Street Market downtown, open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
She cooks all week. She started out just selling pastries, but has expanded to meals, and now finds that they are better business, what with people cutting back on sweets for both budgetary and diet reasons.
Early in the war, the Bosnian government had taken their new car — for which they had paid cash — because it needed cars. Eventually the family also lost its condominium. However, after being in Dayton for years, the Kaurins managed to get repaid for the apartment. That helped them buy a house in the suburbs here.
Their children helped at the market and went through high school here. The girl is heading to graduate school at Columbia University, having graduated from Ohio State a couple years ago. The boy, a senior at the University of Dayton, is thinking about law school.
Money was always tight, but the family managed.
Azra and Ratko became citizens.
That was when you would look at their story and say, “Is this a great country, or what!”
Then came the economic collapse. Ratko lost his job two years ago. Not long after that, a little past 60, he had a heart attack. He was near death and believes if he had been in Bosnia, he probably would have died. But now he is doing well physically.
Azra, too, has had serious health issues, including an ongoing condition that requires prescriptions.
Now there’s no insurance. It’s a scary time.
Ratko has exhausted his unemployment benefits, including health insurance (which came at a very high price, more than a covered employee would pay, but less than the cost of buying insurance on the open market).
After losing his job, he took a community college program that he thought might help him land a job in construction. But he’s still looking for work.
He’s more than a year away from qualifying for Medicare. Azra is in her 50s.
When the Obama health care plan fully kicks in, people like the Kaurins will be able to buy insurance on the open market (in fact, they will be obliged to), and they will get a subsidy from the government if they can’t afford full price. But that won’t happen until 2014.
(Such a big program takes a while to become operational. And the politicians were trying to save some money in the short term — to make the program look deficit-neutral — by delaying.)
The Kaurins have pored over their options, contacting insurers. Some companies have nothing for them. Some quote exorbitant rates. (One asked for almost $6,000 a month for the two of them.) Some offer cheaper policies with huge gaps, such as no coverage for emergencies relating to pre-existing conditions.
One option that arises is returning to Bosnia. But their kids are here. And they lost their Bosnian pensions in the war. Still, it’s a possibility.
Part of the Obama package is a plan for high-risk patients that is just going into effect this week. Each state gets a certain amount of money to help people who have been turned down by private insurers or who meet other criteria. But the program is so new that nobody knows if there will be enough money to cover all who apply, or how quickly decisions might be made.
One guess is that the program might offer something that the Kaurins can afford — to cover one of them. But there is no package for a family.
Sometimes the political fights of a new country are a mystery to immigrants. But the Kaurins have had a crash course in what the American fight about health care is all about. They get it.
