Meet Jeffrey Clark. He is the teabagger challenging Tom Perriello, one of the most principled members of Congress (yay!). He is running as an independent in protest to the Republican nominee, Robert Hurt, who is seen as a compromiser and moderate because he once voted for a tax increase that a Democratic governor called for and because he has requested $150 million in earmarks over the course of his career as a state senator (they're not called that in the state government, but that's what they are). Understandably, to some teabaggers this makes Hurt unacceptably liberal, and hence the Clark candidacy.
Here's a fascinating thing about Jeffrey Clark. He and his family have filed for bankruptcy and have long struggled with debt, often having wages garnished by creditors. The reason: Crippling medical bills. They don't have health insurance.
In other words, the teaparty candidate is a walking billboard ad for Obama's healthcare reform.
You can see his story in detail here, reprinted in an online news site in Danville, one of the reddest parts of the district. Now, I do not wish to gloat at Mr. Clark's problems. On the contrary, I wince reading about them, and I do not enjoy dwelling on them. I hope that he and his family get out of this jam quickly and never have these problems again.
But what a teaching moment this is! Listen to the key pieces of the family's problems:
In 1993, Clark and his wife, Gerri, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy while living in Greensboro, N.C. According to the filing, the couple owed at least three physicians' offices for unpaid bills,...
They sought bankruptcy protection because Clark had just been laid off from his job and suddenly needed back surgery for a ruptured disc, as well as an appendectomy.
The biggest recent bill, however, comes from a $70,000 heart operation Clark underwent in April at Duke University Hospital. Clark, who says he is in good health now, has managed to negotiate the procedure's bill down to around $36,000.
And to sum up:
"Like many Americans, we filed for bankruptcy after a series of events that was just unavoidable," Clark said. "It wasn't something we wanted to do. It was something we had to do to survive."
Do we need a better example of why healthcare reform was necessary? This family had some health problems that just broke their back, because they did not have adequate healthcare insurance. I don't know what kind of plan they had before they cancelled the insurance, but we know that the individual market is horribly, prohibitively expensive, and it is likely that they bought the bottom-of-the-line package and could barely afford that. Obviously, the insurance did them know good at all when a family member actually needed an operation.
And the teabaggers actually want to repeal the reforms that, once they all kick in, will actually make quality healthcare insurance affordable.
Two notes: First, Mr. Clark seems to be a bit softer on his anti-healthcare kick than the typical teabagger, even suggesting the need for some regulation:
Insurance companies should not be able to drop your coverage due to serious illness nor should they be able to raise your premiums with the intent of making coverage so cost prohibitive that you simply can no longer afford it.
(I wonder where he got that idea? Although he falsely states that there is no such protection in the Democratic bills.)
Second, if you click through to the news article and read the comments, you may see my attempts to explain healthcare reform to the readership and how this applies to it, in heavily wingnut-invested waters. I think this kind of article, in this kind of setting, is a fantastic opportunity to get this point of view out into the open. These people will not hear the case for these policies from anyone. But they need to hear it. Of course, the teabagger will not respond to reasoned argument, but they are not the audience. I'm hoping to inform the minimally-informed independent voters who may check out the article and be surprised to see someone standing up, cogently, for healthcare reform. I hope it makes a difference.
And Mr. Clark, if you are reading this, I don't think you and I will agree on much of anything, but I sincerely wish you and you family luck in getting past this -- politics aside. All best.