THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, July 21, 1994                TAG: 9407210478
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY DENNIS PATTERSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: RALEIGH                            LENGTH: Medium:   60 lines

MOTHER TELLS PANEL OF FISCAL VISE WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE GIRL WAS EXCLUDED FROM COVERAGE WHEN FATHER CHANGED JOBS.

Jim and Kathy Elmore have health insurance. So do two of their three children.

But when Jim Elmore changed jobs last year, his new group insurance refused to cover Megan, their teenage daughter who began having epileptic seizures after brain surgery.

``Can you imagine being 18 years old and facing the future with no health insurance?'' Kathy Elmore asked the state Health Planning Commission Wednesday. ``Her medical bills take approximately 30 percent of our net income. We work every day, and we try to raise our family in a responsible way.''

The medicine Megan uses to control the seizures costs $150 a month, an annual scan to check her condition costs $1,000. Those expenses, plus trips to the neurosurgeon and any other medical needs, come out of the Rutherford County couple's $29,000 annual income.

Kathy Elmore said she didn't know Megan would lose her insurance coverage when her husband took a new job with a self-insured company.

``Many people say we should have stayed where we were with insurance,'' she said. ``We were naive.

``We need affordable insurance. Anybody could be put in our position. . . present.''

The commission, formed last year by the legislature and chaired by Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., is studying the state's health care needs. It is supposed to develop recommendations for improving health care by next year.

Megan is one of 22,000 people in the state considered medically uninsurable, said Chris Conover of the Duke University Center for Health Policy Research and Education.

She is among the estimated 963,518 people in the state without health coverage of any kind.

Those estimates, broken down by counties, show that nearly one of every four people in Camden County has no insurance on any given day. Statewide, 14.4 percent of the population is without coverage on any day.

``What we are talking about are people who don't, won't or can't get coverage,'' said Rep. Joe Mavretic, a member of the commission and chairman of a state House panel that created it. ``But they are getting care.

``It's limited and it's real, real late and it's expensive,'' he said, adding that their costs are transferred to others with insurance or other ways to pay.

The effects of no insurance coverage include little preventive medicine and patients who wait too long to get help because they can't afford care.

``All other things being equal, an uninsured person is 25 times more likely to die than an insured person with the same conditions,'' Conover said.

KEYWORDS: NORTH CAROLINA HEALTH PLANNING COMMISSION

by CNB