Fair hopes to raise awareness of the uninsured

Published Thursday, May 1, 2008

By Mandy Bourgeois

What if all city of Decatur and Bridgeport residents were uninsured?

The idea is not that far-fetched.

According to research done by the Texas Health Institute, Wise County had 10,150 uninsured residents in 2005. That's 17.5 percent of the population.

Of the 10,150 uninsured residents, 4,177 people were between the ages of 18 and 34 and 2,294 were under the age of 18.

"It sounds low, but then you look at the people in the 18 to 34 range who are uninsured," said Martin Woodruff, executive director of Wise County United Way. "That's the big group."

This Saturday, the Wise County United Way and Wise County Health Forum are hosting a health fair from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Decatur Civic Center. The event is part of a nationwide focus on the underinsured and uninsured as part of Cover the Uninsured Week, which runs through May 3.

"We want to get people thinking about this and what it means to people here," Woodruff said. "There are 10,000 people, which includes a lot of school-aged kids, who are uninsured."

Woodruff said that reasons for being uninsured range from the high cost of health care and the trend of taking health care out of employees' benefit packages. Some people feel that they are healthy and don't need insurance.

"As long as you have your health, you may be OK. But if an illness comes along or an accident, all of a sudden you could be broke," Woodruff said. "I can't tell you how many calls I've received in the last year from people looking for assistance because something happened that took away their ability to take care of their family financially. Things were OK until something happened - then their whole world caved in. There are potentially thousands of those stories out there. It's a time bomb."

The health fair is open to all ages. Woodruff said he hopes the fair will get people talking about the high number of uninsured in Wise County, as well as Texas.

Visit http://www.covertheuninsured.org for more information and for a list of events.