Readers share thoughts on health care series
In this week's Beacon-News series on health care, "How do you feel?", local people involved in the health care debate shared their stories.
And readers shared back.
Several people wrote us about the segment on "Diane," a Montgomery woman who lost her insurance a few months after suffering heart failure. She could not afford the rehabilitation the doctors recommended, nor the tests to find if the medications prescribed two years earlier were still effective.
Diane doesn't want people to know she's on disability, hence the fake name.
Reader Cheri Brizz, 65, of Sandwich, wrote with a message for Diane.
"Tell her she doesn't have to use a false name or anything else. There's nothing to be ashamed of. There are a lot of people in that position. You just have to adjust your way of thinking," Brizz later said by phone. "You should be proud of who you are and your accomplishments in life."
Brizz, who had worked since she was 10, was unable to work following complications from a surgery years earlier in which she had half her stomach removed. Bills piled up and then she was evicted, fired and had her car repossessed. All within one 24-hour period.
A conversation with her son, who also helps support her, helped her adjust to going on public assistance.
"I was humiliated. I just kept saying 'I can't do this. I can't do this.' And he said, 'Mom, you're going to have to do this. This isn't charity. You paid into Social Security your whole life,'" Brizz said.
There are frustrations. Pharmacists have called out prescriptions as "This is for the lady who's on public aid!" and Brizz was told her disability wouldn't cover some preventative dental work she needed.
It would, however, cover pulling out all her teeth and giving her dentures.
Another reader wanted to pass on a message to Diane: CHIP.
"For many years, the state of Illinois and other states have provided a program to help insure persons who could not qualify for regular insurance and did not qualify for Medicaid for other reasons. This is the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, or CHIP as it is often called. The Web site is www.chip.state.il.us," the Naperville man wrote, adding that it sounds like Diane would qualify.
Auroran Joe Hamilton, 59, wrote that Diane's story hit close to home. He has Stage II colon cancer. This week his wife got notice that her office is closing, ending her job and their insurance.
Her last day will be Nov. 30. They knew it was coming.
When their COBRA expires, Hamilton will be 61 or 62. He's considering going uninsured for the three years until his Medicare starts. The Hamiltons aren't banking on an insurance company accepting someone with pre-existing colon cancer.
"We're going to be in a position of having to roll the dice in hoping the chemo did the trick and that the colon cancer doesn't come back," he said.
Of course, there were negative responses. One man wrote that he in no way felt sympathy for Jean Erickson, a woman who went uninsured after finding that paying for a COBRA out of her unemployment would leave her $21 a month for the rest of her bills.
Although sympathy was neither Erickson's nor the article's goal, the reader expounded on why Erickson was not in a bad situation and why government should not be involved in health care at all.
He also mentioned he's on Medicare.
The last story didn't come from a reader, but I like it.
Rob Davis had to quit one of his three jobs this spring. The money from the overnight parking lot attendant job was good, but he was worried about falling asleep behind the wheel.
Between the boat company and the harbor, his wife Ragna only has two jobs.
They're both in their 40s, both in school (Rob's studying to be a therapist; Ragna, a nurse) and have two boys, a mortgage and a pile of debt. None of their four jobs offer health insurance. They can afford it only for Ragna and the boys. They want a public option. Badly.
So what did this cash-strapped family of four do? They became a family of five, taking an out-of-work friend -- me -- into their home until he got back on his feet.
I moved out in June. I started at The Beacon-News in September.
Instead of the sneering insinuations that people who support a public option just want to get, Rob and Ragna made their lives an example of how to give.
Thank you, guys. More than you can ever know.
