He says many of his colleagues across the country "openly speculate that it will take a catastrophic failure somewhere to give everyone a wake-up call."
Dr. Kellerman points to some ominous warning signs: Public hospitals in Los Angles and Detroit narrowly avoiding bankruptcy. His own hospital, as well as Atlanta's other six hospitals, frequently have to stop accepting new patients in their emergency rooms because they are overflowing.
It is not quite that bad in northwest Ohio, but Mr. Brass, says "day in and day out" many area residents without insurance show up at the area's hospital emergency rooms.
Mr. Brass says the rising number of uninsured, and underinsured, in America is "becoming a critical problem." He says some estimates predict in two years the number of uninsured could climb to 51 million. That is more than the combined population of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Iowa. Hospitals, including his, are struggling to absorb those unpaid costs and that trend cannot continue unabated, he says.
"It's a pretty scary situation," Dr. Kellerman agreed. "The only thing that amazes me as an ER doc is why the press, the public, and the politicians aren't a lot more alarmed than they are now."
Dr. Kellerman was the co-chairman of a task force appointed by the Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government and others, to examine the issue of the uninsured. The group issued a report earlier this year calling for universal coverage of all Americans. The other co-chairman was Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan.
"I think the thing that struck all of us is if you go back 20 years, the problem is getting worse," Ms. Coleman says. "Even with good economic times, like the late 1990s, the number of uninsured was 38 million."
