| I am not a member of the VWC, and I am lucky enough to currently have health insurance, but there have been times when my family and I did not have the health insurance we needed. I testified at the Burlington Healthcare Hearing and you may read portions of that testimony below.
This past Sunday, I was at an afternoon event and met an insurance businessman, whose whole 40-year career revolved around health insurance. He said that establishing a single-payer universal healthcare program would save this country billions if not trillions of dollars and give everyone access to better care than they have now. I was stunned, as I had imagined he would wholeheartedly support the insurance point of view.
I have spoken with numerous friends and colleagues in my age group who want to change jobs, take an early retirement, or begin a new business, but cannot afford to because they would not have access to affordable health care. Especially during this time of economic crisis and layoffs, it is so important for Vermonters to be able to retire or start new businesses thus opening up existing job positions for those waiting to move into the career marketplace.
Come speak in support of Healthcare Is A Human Right to our Legislators tomorrow at noon at the Statehouse. Your support is needed.
From my testimony:
"Healthcare is a Human Right"
"Mayor (Bob) Kiss, Rabbi (Joshua) Chasan, Dr. (Ann) Goering, Rev. (Sarah) Flynn, and the other panelists (Jennifer Henry, Rebecca Haslam, Roddy Cleary, Al Robinson, Mohamed Abdi, Hal Colston, Denise Foote), thank you for donating your time to work on behalf of all Vermonters. Each one of you holds a position in which you see the need for universal healthcare on a daily basis.
...I live in Burlington. I am lucky that currently I have healthcare, but that has not always been the case...in 1990, we lost our health insurance. Initially we had COBRA, which, as most of you probably know, enables an individual to extend their original policy for 18 months. The cost is prohibitive. Back in 1990, when our family of four faced grave financial circumstances...we shelled out more than $800 each month to keep our family insured. For a time it was a viable solution, but ultimately, we could not afford to pay that sum every month and canceled our medical insurance. While my husband was beginning to do some consulting work, my income as a newspaper report was barely enough to support one person, let alone a family of four. We were lucky in that for the next 12 months we were able to buy a major medical policy for $160 each quarter in case anyone in the family needed hospitalization, and with young children such a policy is critical. Finally, the newspaper I worked for offered health insurance, and we were covered once again, but the cost was so high, I was left with even less take-home pay from my meager salary. Our doctors helped us out by treating our children for free or by dramatically reducing their fee. It was a very challenging time.
Ultimately we both turned to teaching, and taught for six years in Connecticut before moving to Vermont in 2001, so that Arnie could teach at Burlington High, and I could return to school at Burlington College to become a paralegal. Our teaching jobs provided medical insurance for us and for our children until they both finished college and began their own careers.
Our son is a web designer in Washington, DC. The first three years he was building his business from scratch, he went without medical insurance. It scared us, especially during the early years, when he worked as a bike messenger and bar tender, so that he could pay his bills while developing his business. No, he is not in Vermont, but his story is pertinent because his small two-person shop has grown to 12 employees, all with medical insurance if they wish it. And, while he does have basic insurance, it is extremely costly for him, his employees, and his business. Each policy has such a huge deductible that thus far no one has recouped any of their costs. Financially, it is a huge drain on his little company.
Vermont needs more jobs and the opportunity to grow its economy. Everywhere I turn, I meet people who wish they could change jobs, start their own business, work for a non-profit, work part-time so they could do more volunteer work... their dreams are inspiring. Yet, most of them stay exactly where they are working, because they cannot afford to change jobs and lose their medical insurance. Imagine if everyone had health care, all the little companies like my son's that would provide good jobs and bring businesses and economic growth to Vermont.
Vermont's children are lucky that Dr. Dinosaur assures every child of medical insurance, but what happens when those children turn 18-years-old? I know several of my husband's former BHS students, who are working or working and attending college part-time, and not one of them has health insurance or receives healthcare because they cannot afford to see a doctor. Most of them do not even have money for a car, and are at further risk for injury by biking in truly inclement weather.
Our 26-year-old daughter is a paramedic in Charleston, SC, and now that she is with Charleston County EMS, she has complete medical insurance, but that was not true for her first paramedic position in Northern California. As a fully licensed paramedic, facing all types of illness from exposure to patients and the danger of traveling at a high rate of speed in an ambulance, she was uninsured. She no longer fell under our insurance coverage, and had a six-month waiting period to qualify for insurance from the ambulance corps. So here she was doing a critical life saving job, being paid about $9 an hour, and had no medical insurance, and had to pay back school loans as well.
What are we doing to our young people who need a livable wage, access to healthcare, and access to further education?
Before moving to her first paramedic job in California, our daughter was employed as an EMT in Fletcher Allen's Emergency Department, where, time and time again, she took care of people who came to the emergency department because they had nowhere else to go. Sometimes it was because they just needed basic care and had no money for a doctor. Other times, they had struggled to maintain their health, and finally had a cut, bruise, break, or illness, that had gotten much worse and now required serious medical intervention because they had no healthcare provider to care for them when their illness was in its early stages. The cost of such emergency healthcare is staggering, and it must be paid by the rest of the Vermonters who have medical insurance, it comes in the form of higher hospital costs and insurance rates.
My friend Marilyn is in her 70's. She has worked her whole life, and her husband has worked his whole life. Now, they both live on social security and Medicare. Even though he was employed as a Burlington firefighter for some time, throughout most of his life he worked in the construction trades, and thus has no pension. Since, Marilyn's husband is currently in remission from prostate cancer, they must carry supplemental health insurance at a cost of $160 per month. As costs continue to escalate around them, they are hard put to pay almost $2,000 per year for supplemental care. At 70-years-old, Marilyn has no choice but to occasionally clean houses in order to make ends meet.
In June, my husband...retired from teaching at BHS. He will be 60 in January, so we are not eligible to collect social security or Medicare, and as a self-employed paralegal, I relied upon my husband's BHS medical plan. We got scared this summer when we began trying to unravel what insurance and medical care we would be able to have for the next 3 years.
The cost of healthcare, even Catamount, is very high. Finally, another retired teacher informed us that we were eligible for healthcare through his retirement account, and that is what we are doing. It means that further down the road, we will have less retirement, but since each one of us has had prior health issues, we believe we had no other option. My husband had viral pericarditis, an inflammation around the heart, which morphed into post-viral neuropathy, which means at times that he has great pain in his legs. We are lucky. We have healthcare, great doctors and care givers, and medical insurance.
Many, many Vermonters are not so lucky. I believe that healthcare is a right. I am asking you on this panel to help get that message to our State Legislature and to our Governor. Our taxes are paying for a terrible war and a banking and financial debacle of extreme proportion. It is time that we focused on all Vermonters and provided them with the healthcare each American deserves. It is our right to receive such care, and I believe it is our moral obligation to provide such care to all Vermonters and all Americans."
I know many Vermonters who are now without any health insurance and have no possibility of regaining it in the future. I believe it is time to stop enriching corporate giants or exiting CEO's, and to use that money make Healthcare A Human Right. |
