Tomorrow at 5:00 pm I'll be going to The Mississippi Pizza Pub here in Portland Oregon to watch some live music. Portland has a great music scene and I often like to go out and see shows, but this time I'm going out to help and support someone who really needs it. Her name is Amy Maddux and the show is a benefit to help her with her cancer treatments.
Amy has worked at the same job for 3 years, but she is technically a contractor. That means she is not eligible for health benefits from her company. To make matters worse she has a mild case of asthma and was rejected three different times when trying to buy health insurance for herself. Then she got cancer.
So far she has been able to obtain treatment and keep working, but it has left her with an astronomical amount of medical debt and she still has a surgery and radiation treatments to finish. Even if she is able to obtain the rest of the treatment she needs, without some kind of help her bills will become overwhelming.
An estimated 20 million people in the U.S. have asthma. As best I can tell 1 in 3 people will have cancer at some time in their lives. By my math that means that somewhere around 6.7 million people will suffer both asthma and cancer at sometime in their lives. How many of those people are or will be caught in the same trap that Amy is caught in? How many will see their life savings wiped out? How many will die because they couldn't get affordable coverage?
Sadly Amy's situation is a common one in this country. So I decided to write this diary in case there were any Portland area Kossacks who were interested in going to the show. You can see the details here. If you're interested in going you should click on the facebook link and RSVP. If you can't come but want to make a donation there's a link for that too.
Amy is fortunate in that she has a strong group of friends that care enough to try and help her out. But as you know not everyone is this lucky and many will have to face situations like this alone. Maybe that will change in the near future if congress passes a good reform bill. Right now I am more hopeful than ever that it will.