Mrs. Johnson Goes to Washington

ABINGDON, Va. – Loretta Johnson is a 62-year-old health care worker who can’t afford health insurance, so she’s decided to do something about it.
Johnson, of Lebanon, Va., has taken leave from her job as a personal care assistant to go to Washington to lobby for health care reform – and try to help legislators put a human face on a complex problem.

“I’m not old enough for Medicare and don’t qualify for Medicaid,” Johnson said. “I am paying on a hospital bill right now from two years ago when I was diagnosed with a heart attack.”

A former deputy court clerk, Johnson said she quit her job in 2000 to take care of her sick husband until his death in 2005 – then took care of her father until he passed away. Two years ago, she started her job as a personal care assistant.

Her lobbying effort is funded by the Service Employees International Union. She’s been in Washington since February and plans to stay through the summer; she said she is one of a dozen grassroots lobbyists from across the country who are working together on the effort.

“The union has allowed us the vehicle to be here, but we are lobbying for our communities,” Johnson said. “Affordable health coverage for every citizen in Southwest Virginia: affordable means that a lot of the people in Southwest Virginia are elderly, on a fixed income, or not working at all. So it has to be something that covers that realm of people.”

In Washington, Johnson is visiting senators and representatives, writing letters, rallying in front of government buildings and attending Congressional hearings.

Her support is for a proposed plan that would provide government-run health insurance available to all citizens, which she said would provide “affordable, good quality health care” for everyone. She said this plan should provide access to health care coverage for small businesses, people with pre-existing conditions, older workers like herself and other hard-to-insure groups. She said it would result in competition with private plans, driving down the cost of the insurance and the cost of care.

Opponents of a government health care system argue it would do the opposite, resulting in reduced efficiency, higher costs and lower standards of care – meaning harm would come to patients, including people like her. Opponents also point to the higher U.S. survival rates of cancer and other illnesses compared to those in industrialized nations with government-run health care systems.

“The President has called it a public option, but unfortunately, the way that things would work if we have a public health insurance plan, it’s going to be paid for by taxpayers and it will be able to set its prices as low as the Congress decides, so it would quickly drive private insurance out of business and would leave us with only the public plan,” said Amy Menefee, policy advisor for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

Menefee said more personalized care – and low-cost clinics that treat minor illness and serve cash patients – are the way the health care industry is evolving, along with a flurry of other innovations.

“The only thing that’s going to truly bring down cost is to have more competition for our business as consumers in the health care market,” Menefee said.

Her organization also has put a human face on the health care debate – that of Canadian Shona Holmes, who mortgaged her house and came to the United States for life-saving medical treatment after being placed on lengthy waiting lists in her own country.

Menefee said the same thing would happen here under a government plan: long waiting lists for government-rationed care and higher taxes on the middle class to pay for a substandard system. Meanwhile, added bureaucracy would increase the cost, the burden on doctors and drive people out of the medical profession, she said.

Menefee said she has a better solution: Let the medical community continue health care innovation that is merely in its infancy – and provide tax incentives to increase options and accessibility to health care.

Meanwhile, Johnson, who left Southwest Virginia in hopes of prodding national-scale reform, said her work to get a government plan won’t stop when she gets back home – even if it means just hosting house parties to write letters to congressmen about the issue.

She said reform is coming – and she believes it will make things easier on people like her.

“Every time I walk up the front of the Capitol, I still get goosebumps,” she said. “Our history is being made every day, and I am a part of it. ... I am honored to be here.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701