Here is our story. This is how people without health care live.
Robby and Annie, a young married, college-educated couple with a baby, tried to purchase health insurance. Robby was struggling as an impoverished law student and Annie was keeping babies in-home and teaching fitness part-time. Had they lied to claim they made more, they would have qualified for a subsidized policy. But their true income disqualified them from anything except a $600 a month crapola policy. It may as well have been a million. Unreachable.
Because of no money and no insurance, our son Robby endured what he thought was a sinus infection for days before New Years. (He and Annie are still paying their $15,000 share of a necessary surgery 5 years ago when they HAD insurance, and there is nothing extra for doctor fees.) Finally, on Jan. 10, violently ill, Robby was forced to seek ER services. The initial diagnoses were viral meningitis and bacterial tonsillitis. Once the unrelenting fever was corralled, he was discharged, 3 days later, with prescriptions and the warning that the symptoms would last awhile. And they did, with an intense vengeance. When his tongue and lips swelled and his neck and scalp became itchy red, he stopped all meds. Worried parents and siblings offered to pay for a doctor, but Robby refused with the promise that if the fever became really high again, he would accept. He had to drop out of his law studies as a direct consequence of allowing the initial untreated illness to escalate.
Robby worked 10 years for a non-profit including a year with Americorps in the Catskill Mts of NY. He has paid taxes, never asked for a handout, and doesn’t deserve to be treated so callously by LA’s governor. When Jindal takes away affordable health care from people, he takes away a lot more than that. We hold Governor Jindal of LA personally responsible for the havoc wrought on our family. He refuses to accept Medicaid dollars which has created an insurance coverage gap for over 240,000 Louisianians. Nationwide 5 million Americans are in this gap. They make too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to purchase subsidized ACA plans. For shame. Such cruel atrocity is beneath the dignity of a country as great as ours.
Sincerely,
Gilda Reed