Has Your Life Become Too Much A Game Of Chance?

By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

In case you haven't noticed, over the past two decades the people in Washington who write the laws have turned your life into a spin of the roulette wheel--actually, an endless series of spins of the wheel that begin with day care and end with retirement (if you can afford it), and affect everything in between. Overall, Washington has structured the game just as any gambling house would, so there are a few winners but a lot more losers.

It's why many of us are falling further behind the harder we work, why our debt dwarfs that of our parents, why some of us receive world-class medical care and others almost none, why some can afford college but for others it has been priced out of reach, and why the wage gap between rich and poor has started growing again. In 1992 the 400 individuals and families with the highest income in the U.S., according to tax returns filed with the IRS, received on average $12.3 million in "salaries and wages."By 2000, the latest year available, that figure had more than doubled, to $29 million.

More significant, in 1992 it took the combined wages of 287,400 retail clerks at, say, Wal-Mart, to equal the pay of the top 400. By 2000 it required the combined pay of 504,600 retail clerks to match the pay of the top 400. That's roughly the equivalent of the folks in Big Piney, Wyo., receiving the same income as all the people in Pittsburgh, Pa., and several of its suburbs.

To be sure, Washington lawmakers, including members of both parties, like to pretend all this is a matter of free will, that people make their choices and then must accept the consequences. But the right choices--going to school, working hard, saving for a down payment--used to offer a reasonable assurance of achieving the American dream. While most of us still have a decent shot at the good life, risk has been introduced into American life--the risk of never getting on track to prosperity, or falling suddenly from it--in ways few Washington policymakers would care to admit.

Through no choice of his own, Donald Campbell, 47, a computer tech-support representative, got to play this game last fall. Campbell had worked in the information-technology field for several Los Angeles--area companies before joining Candle Corp., which makes computer system--monitoring software, 412 years ago. Campbell, who has two grown children and a 7year-old, worked in a call center answering questions about the software. He earned $60,000 a year. Last fall Candle closed the center and transferred the work to India. Says Campbell: "When you take the high-tech industry and send it overseas, where's your economy going? They pay $5,000 to $6,000 a year. How can you compete with that?"

Campbell decided it was time to embark on a new career. He and two colleagues applied for Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program that Congress enacted in 1974, when manufacturing workers began losing their jobs to imported goods. The idea was that a worker who lost his or her job when cheaper imported goods captured the U.S. market could receive as much as two years of retraining, a cash allowance that picked up after unemployment benefits ran out, and money to cover relocation expenses.

Last November Campbell and his colleagues got their answer. The Labor Department rejected their request, saying "the performance of services does not constitute production of an article," as required by law. In short, if you work in a factory and lose your job to imports, you get help. If you are in a service industry and your job is moved abroad, you don't qualify. They lost the game.

That's the way Congress runs it. They rig it, which is why 44 million people have no health insurance, why tens of millions who do have insurance don't have a clue what it covers until it's too late, and why you pay more for your prescription drugs than do people anywhere else in the industrialized world (see following story). Worst of all, the biggest losers in the health-care lottery are middle-income folks and the working poor, who are least able to afford to pay for medical services. In fact, if you are uninsured and are admitted to a hospital in an emergency, you will be charged at a higher rate than seniors covered by Medicare or working people with health insurance through their employers. And if you fail to come up with the money, you may lose your house or have your wages attached. All that is certain is that you don't want to be on the losing end of Congress's lottery. Ask Jim Wester of Las Vegas.

Wester runs his own one-man welding business. His income is solidly middle class. And he has a health-insurance policy--albeit one with a $3,000 deductible--to cover himself, his wife Richelle and a teenage daughter. Wester thought the couple's newborn son Hunter would automatically be covered. He thought wrong. That was his first lottery loss.

When 9-month-old Hunter spent 18 days in Sunrise Hospital, where he was treated for a brain aneurysm, the Westers received a bill for $135,000. Bills from other doctors and health-care providers brought the total to $180,000. Wester says he began making payments on the hospital bill, but they weren't enough. Sunrise turned the bill over to a collection agency and then sued. A judge knocked the total bill down to $98,000, which included court costs and attorney fees. An attorney suggested bankruptcy, but then a friend of a friend who worked for a medical-billing company negotiated the collection agency down to a single payment of $40,000. The Westers took out a loan against their house to pay it off. They still owe a second collection agency more than $30,000 for other medical services. "I work my butt off practically every day," says Wester. "I don't buy things I can't afford, and I basically save every penny I have." He drives a truck that's worth less than $1,000, and his wife drives one that's 14 years old.

But wait--isn't it a pretty good deal to cut a hospital bill from $135,000 to $40,000? Maybe in any other field, but not in health care. What the Westers found out is that they had just lost the second lottery. Hospitals everywhere--public, nonprofit institutions as well as private, profit-making ones--routinely charge the uninsured, the people who have no clout, the most. How much more? On average, five times as much, according to K.B. Forbes, a patient-rights advocate who has spent the last three years analyzing and securing reductions in the hospital bills of uninsured working people from California to Florida. In the Westers' case, Forbes found, Medicare would have paid less than $10,000 for comparable services and private insurance carriers would have paid perhaps $18,000--instead of the $40,000 the couple agreed to pay and the $135,000 they were originally charged. "Hospital price gouging is the worst because it drives families to bankruptcy," says Forbes, who is leading a crusade to bring fairness to hospital billing.

The idealized version of the Federal Government is not one that creates a long-odds game. Rather, it is a Congress that enacts laws to assure all people of being accorded the same rights, enjoying the same incentives and rewards, and benefiting from the same protections when they suffer from events beyond their control. Some government functions--albeit more often at the local and state levels--still work that way. After all, the police don't ask you how much money you make when you call 911, nor do fire fighters. But in Washington something has gone seriously awry. In a series of investigative reports between now and the presidential election on Nov. 2, TIME will explore the many ways in which American life has become a game of chance--one that has no mercy on Middle America and the working poor--and what can be done to restore decent odds for the pursuit of happiness. --With reporting by Laura Karmatz and Barbara Kiviat and research by Joan Levinstein

With reporting by Laura Karmatz and Barbara Kiviat and research by Joan Levinstein