Expert to speak on need to universalize health care

Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of the Louisville Metro Health Department and associate professor at the University of Louisville, will speak about health care inequality and the need to universalize health care.\nTroutman will lead an interactive discussion at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center today from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. He will give a speech at the Monroe County Public Library at 7 p.m.\nThis event is presented in conjunction with the fifth annual “Cover the Uninsured Week,” which started April 22 and runs through April 29. “Cover the Uninsured Week” was created to promote awareness of the national health care problem and action to help solve it.\nSince Troutman is an associate professor at the University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences, he has an extensive background in public health advocacy.\n“Dr. Troutman’s experience will speak for itself,” said Karen Green Stone, communications director for Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports that the United States has more than 44.5 million residents who are uninsured. Indiana has more than 860,000 residents who are uninsured. This does not include any numbers on people who are underinsured.\n“Right now, just in the ninth district of Indiana, there are about 90,000 uninsured Hoosiers,” Stone said. “(‘Cover the Uninsured Week’) brings attention, sets a conversation and hopefully will find a solution.”\nAlthough health care is a concern on a national stage for most of the year, Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan hope to localize it by creating this special Bloomington event.\nWhile Troutman appreciates the light that the week shines on health care, he said “the issue itself is what’s most important – the rising number of individuals and families with no health insurance” and those who are underinsured.\nThis “inequitable distribution of resources with health and health care … indicate lack of social justice with basic provision of the right to health,” Troutman said.\nHe said universalized health care alone would not be the answer to America’s health care problems since “universal coverage doesn’t guarantee universal access,” but it would be a major step in the right direction.\nTroutman said people typically affected by either being uninsured or underinsured are the poor, blacks, Latinos, American Indians and “others that are traditionally marginalized.”\nPushing for universal coverage with universal access and a single standard of high quality health care is key, Troutman said. He is expected to highlight this topic in his speech.\nMusic graduate student Elizabeth Borowsky, a founding member of Students for a Commonsense Health Plan, said she decided to get involved in the cause after taking a health psychology course with IU professor Barbara Walker.\nAfter meeting with other students who also were interested in Indiana’s health care “crisis,” they banded together to form Students for a Commonsense Health Plan. The organization was responsible for the “Cover the Uninsured Week” kickoff benefit concert.\n“I think that the primary goal of ‘Cover the Uninsured Week’ is to raise awareness within this community about the large amount of uninsured and underinsured people,” Borowsky said.\nA Horizons of Knowledge grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Dean of Faculties and donations from IU’s departments of public health, social work, psychology, optometry and the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions helped bring Troutman to Bloomington.