PR COPY
A Family with Special Needs Finds a Special Home at Remington
Builder:Remington Homes
Writer:Michael Amedeo
CHICAGO, IL., September 17– In trying to rebuild their lives from a horrible tragedy, the Knudsen family received help from what some would consider an unlikely source—locally based Remington Homes.
The story of how that happened began on March 9, 2011, when 20-year-old Dan Knudsen—an ambitious and energetic student at the Baptist school Cedarville University in Ohio—was on a mission trip to Mexico. His group was putting on a show for kids, and Dan volunteered to do one of his “patented” back flips. He leaped backward, but something went terribly wrong: He fell in a distressing heap. He wasn’t breathing, and people had to give him to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Later, doctors found that Dan had sustained a severe C2-level spinal injury and was paralyzed from the neck down. Now a quadriplegic, he would need a diaphragm pacer to breathe and a mouth-operated, motorized wheelchair to move around.
For Dan’s loving parents, Bill and Debbie, the injury raised all sorts of heart-rending questions about Dan’s long-term care, his quality of life, and his ultimate ability to survive. But a less profound but still very crucial issue also pressed in on them: Where would they live? It would have to be in a home that afforded Dan maximum maneuverability and that provided him at least a modicum of comfort. “We couldn’t continue to live in our four-level house in Geneva. We had to buy a new home, an open, one-story ranch,” said Bill. But that was—as they say—easier said than done.
Bill and Debbie went to several large builders in the Chicago area and saw a number of spacious and attractive ranches. The problem was that none of the builders would agree to make the design modifications the Knudsens needed to accommodate Dan’s needs. “They would do what we wanted only if we bought a custom-designed home, which ran around $650,000,” said Bill. Facing a large portion of Dan’s lifetime care costs, which could exceed an estimated $1,000,000, Bill (a salesman) and Debbie (a teacher) couldn’t afford such an expensive home.
Luckily, one of Bill’s co-workers knew Greg Rose, a general sales manager at builder Remington Homes. When Rose heard the Knudsens’ story, he was deeply moved. “I wanted to do everything in my power to help them,” he said. “At Remington, we build our considerable reputation, in part, on being able to customize homes to meet every buyer’s needs. The only difference with the Knudsens was that their needs were a little greater than our average customer’s. So we were determined to move forward”
In late 2011, Rose showed them the three-bedroom, two-bath Wellington ranch at the emerging Remington Meadows in west Elgin. At about 2,500 square feet, the community’s largest ranch, the home boasted a starting price under the mid $300’s. “The model had one of the most gorgeous ranch plans we had ever seen. We wanted it—with changes,” said Debbie.
That’s where Bill took over. He essentially redesigned the home, and—according to Debbie—“Remington did everything we asked.” The builder widened the hallways, re-angling corners from 90 degrees to 45 degrees so that Dan’s wide-bodied wheelchair could move through. The chair would be able to slide under the kitchen counter after the cabinetmaker created a larger overhang. Remington also installed a huge roll-in shower in the bath and a ramp in the newly extended two-car garage, which would be Dan’s main entry point. All potential obstacles and barriers were removed, including pillars in the dining room. Finally, in addition to enlarging Dan’s room, the builder installed reinforcements for a ceiling lift, which could transport Dan to other, nearby parts of the house. “We got all that done and saved $50,000 in the process,” said Bill, with relief.
The test for the new house came last June, when the Knudsens moved in. “Dan ended up loving it, because he could go anywhere in the house,” said Debbie. “In our old home, he was confined to one floor. The new home gives him mobility and freedom. It would also be a great gathering place for family and friends to visit Dan.”
Ironically, although the home was built—or at least rebuilt—with Dan in mind, he’s currently away at school—back at Cedarville, studying pre-law. “His physical situation is very fragile. But his attitude toward life is great—he just won’t let the injury stop him from accomplishing his goals,” said Debbie. “He’ll be back home again soon, and we’re grateful we have such a welcoming place for him to live. Thank heavens for Greg Rose and Remington.”
For more information about Remington Homes, call 888-750-7950 or click on www.remington-homes.com. To learn more about Remington Meadows, call Robin Drabant at 847-348-8957 or visit the sales office at 205 Pawtucket Avenue in Elgin. To follow the Knudsens, go to their blog at www.checkinondan.blogpot.com.
Americans have had a front-row seat on the terrible storms, hurricanes, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events brought about by climate change—but have they understood what they’re seeing, hearing, feeling, and experiencing?
By Michael Amedeo
Some researchers believe that a lack of popular comprehension may account for why Americans have yet to develop the political will to do something about climate change. The informed thinking is that American businesses and consumers can’t or won’t act because they don’t have enough cold, hard facts about global warming—facts such as the huge costs it imposes on everyone, from the aggrieved businessperson who needs to pay much more for insurance premiums to the economically disadvantaged family that finds itself homeless and with nowhere to go after the devastation of an extreme weather event.
Perhaps we need more actuarial correctives like the Academy’s newest Essential Elements paper, “Climate Change.” In just two pages, the report provides a storm of simple, enlightening and mostly devastating information about climate change and its effect on American insurers, consumers, and businesses.
The data suggest that North America has been particularly vulnerable to climate change. Specifically, the number of weather-related loss events has grown by a factor of five in the continent over the last thirty years. By contrast, the growth has been less pronounced in the rest of the world: Four-fold in Asia, 2.5 times in Africa, 2 in Europe, and “only” 1.5 in South America.
It’s not some perverse poetic justice that’s targeted the continental home of the world’s industrial superpower. Rather, according to the paper, North America experiences every kind of climate change/extreme weather risk partly because it lacks an east-west mountain range to prevent warm southern air from clashing with cold Canadian weather fronts. This is a telling and compelling fact that’s somehow never “aired” in popular news discussions about how the changing climate impacts North America.
However, with the continent’s relative vulnerability in mind, readers of the report won’t be surprised to learn that the world’s five biggest natural catastrophes ranked by insured losses in 2012 all happened in the United States, including Hurricane Sandy and a series of mighty tornadoes. That year was the worst in a decade of increasingly extreme weather events. The paper notes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded 80 U.S. weather/climate events with losses exceeding $1 billion each between 2004 and 2013, compared with only 46 events the previous decade.
“Climate Change” then breaks down damages by type of weather-related event in the U.S. The biggest—indeed most shocking—increase in damage came in the form of extreme storms such as tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flash floods. According to the NOAA, there were 40 such events with losses over $1 billion each from 2004 to 2013, compared with a mere 13 between 1994 and 2003. That tripling of disastrous weather from one decade to the next should be enough to arouse the attention of even the most apathetic about climate change.
If there’s any good news, it’s that more and better information is coming. The report concludes by revealing that the Academy is joining with other North American actuarial organizations to create the Actuaries Climate Index, which will measure the frequency and intensity of extremes in key climate indicators; and the Actuaries Climate Risk Index, which will evaluate and quantify who and what are currently in harm’s way due to climate change.
Thanks to information from tools such as these, the climate change outside the door will move inside the mind of the American public. Or, at least, that’s the actuarial hope.
The “Voice for Health Care Consumers” Speaks Out on Health-Care Adequacy and Equity in Compelling New Report
Writer: Michael Amedeo
Washington, D.C., September 3—Families USA, a nonpartisan organization that bills itself as the “voice for health care consumers,” today released a 20-page issue brief that it hopes will produce much-needed reform of American health care for people of color. Titled “Network Adequacy and Health Equity: Improving Private Health Insurance Provider Networks for Communities of Color,” the report identifies and probes a problem that receives little exposure in the mainstream press—the fact that getting health insurance coverage is not necessarily the same as getting adequate access to health care, at least not for people of color.
The report reveals that “even with coverage under the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, “people of color face barriers to care,” including health plans that provide an inadequate or inconvenient distribution of care providers, a lack of providers who speak their language, and providers whose limited hours of operation prove difficult or even impossible for people in often low-wage jobs with few benefits and little flexibility.
What can be done? The issue brief argues that private health plan networks can better meet the needs of people of color by providing adequate numbers of providers; adequate types of providers, such as primary care, mental health and substance use disorder care; adequate geographic distribution of providers; accessible office hours; timely access to care through reasonably available appointments; language accessible, culturally competent care; and accurate information about providers.
While it points out that the Affordable Care Act already “gives consumers rights to adequate provider access,” the report offers a strategy to greatly strengthen the Act for people of color by adopting certain model state standards regulating provider networks. It lists a number of examples of strong state regulations such as the one in California mandating that managed care plans provide one full-time doctor for every 1,200 enrollees; or the one in New Jersey requiring that mental health services be available within “20 miles or 30 minutes average driving time….for 90 percent of covered persons.”
The carefully reasoned report acknowledges “health insurance plans alone can not eliminate all of the barriers consumers of color face when seeking health care.” But it stresses the beginnings of a solution that everybody can recognize and understand: Reform must try to ensure that consumers of color can obtain “the right care at the right time, in a language they understand, without having to travel unreasonably far.”
CHIP on the Block?
By Michael Amedeo
Many in the media dwell on how the political extremism and obstruction of the last four years have impacted the body politic.
But at Families USA, the nonpartisan voice for health care consumers, we have a more urgent and more practical concern: how is the endless political battling going to affect the body human—the collective and individual health of Americans?
We’ve already seen the impact of intractable politics on the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Conservative governors and legislatures in twenty-three states have rejected the Act’s free Medicaid funds, leaving millions of their working-poor constituents without health care.
But the next potential challenge to health care could be even more heartbreaking because it would involve our most vulnerable children. The Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program (CHIP), though authorized through 2019, will run out of funding in September 2015. A federal-state partnership with matching funds provided by Washington, CHIP provides health care coverage to more than eight million children in working families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private health insurance.
Passed in 1997, and reauthorized and refunded in 2009 and 2010, CHIP has been highly successful—especially considering its relatively moderate cost (to the Fed) of about 10 billion dollars a year. In partnership with Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, it has reduced the rate of American children without health insurance from about twelve and a half percent to a little more than six percent.
But CHIP hasn’t just covered children; evidence from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly suggests that the program has actually improved children’s health care access, increased their use of primary services, and left them with fewer unmet health needs. Most surprisingly, according to experts cited in an exhaustive AAP report, CHIP appears to have “eliminated or greatly reduced” racial/ethnic disparities among enrolled children.
If a contentious Congress allows this invaluable program to die, what will happen to the more than eight million children currently receiving coverage? Many people believe that the children will transition into the private plans of the Affordable Care Act, though some experts believe those plans lack the strong pediatric protections of CHIP.
Moreover, the Affordable Care Act in its present form cannot serve as a refuge for all of CHIP’s children. The problem is that the Act contains a “family glitch,” a coverage gap that would prevent as many as two million children from receiving subsidies for health care. Without subsidies and without CHIP, these children will go without health insurance.
The stakes are too high, the politics are too tough, and the issues are too complex to allow us the luxury of waiting until next year to do something about renewing CHIP. It will take time to pass the bill to reauthorize, and so we must act now—with an election less than two months away—to pressure lawmakers to support CHIP. If they equivocate, maybe we can hesitate before pulling the levers for them come November.
Actually, there’s a practical reason for refunding CHIP now: Governors and legislatures will soon be assembling next year’s budgets, and they need to know what federal funds will be available to them. It would be tragic if some states decided to drop CHIP because of a lack of certainty about next year’s federal money.
In today’s intensely bitter political environment, CHIP may ironically enjoy some political advantages. It’s long benefitted from bipartisan support. And it has always found favor with voters: Upwards of sixty and seventy percent have supported the program in various polls over the years.
However, we must not take anything for granted. When we argue and advocate for CHIP over the coming weeks and months, we should make sure to convey the full value it brings to children.
CHIP does more than provide children with a healthy start in the conventional sense of “just” treating pediatric problems and preventing serious disease. Rather, health care positively impacts a child’s life educationally and economically as well. According to a recent report from Cornell and Harvard, children with health care go further in school than those who are uninsured. They’re much more likely to finish high school and attend and complete college than children without insurance. In other words, they make good use of those educational dollars that some lawmakers seem so reluctant to invest.
So this election season, when you encounter a politician or a pundit going on and on about the body politic, remind them about the body human: the millions of children who need CHIP to grow healthy and strong.