Virginia Health Reform Campaign Begins

ABINGDON, Va. – Debby Smith spent four years serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and 25 years working as an accountant before she found out she had cancer – and now she can’t get health insurance.

“Since … I can’t work, of course, I don’t have health insurance, which means I have to pay out of pocket for … all my prescriptions and all my doctor visits and everything, and if you don’t work it’s hard to do that,” said Smith, 51, of Appalachia, Va.

“A lot of people, they think that people are just sitting around not doing any work just getting government assistance … and don’t try to do anything for themselves and ask the government to pay for everything,” she said. “I’m not one of those people. ... I’d rather be working and doing my job and making a decent wage, but I’m not able to do that.”

With 12 years to wait for age-related Social Security benefits, she relies on a hospital charity fund for twice-yearly cat scans; a pharmaceutical company’s patient assistance program for help with her cancer drugs and her fiancé, who pays $515 a month for her remaining medication and regular doctor visits.

She says she’s lucky; those like her who have no loved ones to help can’t get the care they need – and, ultimately, they die.

Her horror at what she calls a broken health care system is what drove her to get involved in a growing regional and national effort to mobilize people on the need for comprehensive health care reform.

While she’s not sure she’ll be physically able to ride a bus to Washington, D.C., to tell lawmakers her story firsthand, she’s among many in Southwest Virginia who hope a new administration in the White House will mean an overhaul for the American health care system.

The bus – or buses – headed to the nation’s capital from the region this June are going with the Virginia Organizing Project, which does grassroots organizing around the state and is focusing on health care issues this year.

“On health care reform in particular, we have partnered with a group called Health Care for America Now, which is a national organization which is pushing for health care reform in 2009,” said Brian Johns, Southwest Virginia organizer for VOP.

“We’re saying it [the health care system] really is not working how we’ve got it now, and one step that seems to have a lot of support … is the public health insurance option. So people can keep what they’ve got if they want it, or they can examine what it would be like on the public health plan.”

Johns said most of those who’ve turned out for panel discussions on the issue in this region support the idea of a single-payer system – national health care paid for with federal tax dollars.

He said he’s heard one story after another of people who have somehow been left out – the woman who discovered by chance at a free health clinic that she had lung cancer; a man who couldn’t find a job with an insurance plan that would cover his wife’s pre-existing health conditions.

“We believe that everyone should have comprehensive benefits that meet their needs with the choice of keeping private insurance if they have it or joining a new public health insurance plan,” said Jacki Schechner, spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, which is sponsoring a series of events across the nation this spring to connect people with their legislators.

“We can’t fix the economy without fixing health care,” Schechner said. “It’s bankrupting our families, it’s bankrupting our local governments and it’s bankrupting our businesses. We have to get this fiasco under control once and for all.”

Schechner says she sees the idea of a government health plan as competition for private health insurance and an opportunity to end the cost-shift that happens when people with no preventive care turn up in the emergency room for what began as a minor illness but went untreated because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

In Bristol, Va., John Davis suffers from various ailments and says he’s never had an easy time with the health care system; he says the kind of jobs he was qualified for with a high school diploma never had good insurance and poor coverage meant he often did not receive the medical treatment he needed.

Now, since a gall bladder infection has left him unable to work, he relies on disability and Medicare.

Davis, 53, says his wife is also in poor health and unable to work, so half of the disability check he receives each month goes to pay for public housing rent and utilities; in addition to feeding his family he must pay about $50 a month in co-pays for medication and can only afford the $25 co-pay for one doctor visit per month.

He says health care should be separated from employment – and the government should provide health care for all.

“Right now, we have health care costs driven by two sources. One is the pharmaceutical industry and its never-ending quest for greed, and the other is the insurance industry and its never-ending request for greed, he says.

“Even if I could find something I could do, even if I could get a college degree, I could not get off Social Security without losing my health insurance, and then I’m caught in the insurance companies’ merry-go-round: anybody I go to work for will require a three-month waiting period … and chances are their private insurance company will refuse me benefits for up to a year or two years due to my pre-existing conditions. ... With everything that’s wrong with me, I would probably be dead because I certainly wouldn’t be eligible for Medicaid, and without that I would have to earn a heck of a lot of money to pay for … everything that’s wrong with me.”

Smith says she knows the kind of health plan that would work for folks like her: something along the lines of what her senator and representative have for health care.

“They have a health plan in Congress, and we put those people there,” Smith says. “They work for us, so we should be allowed to join their plan, and it should be on a sliding scale depending on how much money you can afford to pay into it.”

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