Lila Jordan, a 43-year-old resident of south Greensboro, passed a bullhorn among a dozen or so demonstrators on Green Valley Road outside of Sen. Kay Hagan’s office who gave testimonies about the perils of getting sick without health insurance, escalating healthcare costs in family budgets and what they view as the moral imperative to provide healthcare to all Americans.
When it came time for Jordan to give her own story her voice choked up and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Later, she led about 30 proponents of the so-called “public option” up to Hagan’s suite, where they waited for a contingent representing the opposite side of the issue to voice their position to one of the senator’s aides.
Jordan said she attended a MoveOn.org training session in late July, and was instructed to form a committee. She hasn’t managed to do that yet, so she organized the Oct. 15 rally as a one-person committee.
“I actually didn’t have healthcare for two and a half years,” she said. “I was unemployed. I ended up receiving four bills for one visit. I have friends who are unemployed or selfemployed who can’t afford insurance. In my neighborhood, there are so many people who don’t have insurance, not to mention college students.”
Jordan recalled that in the summer of 2008 she underwent medical testing for what she called “a female procedure” while she was unemployed and without insurance. She received a bill from the facility where the test was conducted, one from the primary-care physician, one from the lab where the sample was examined and one from the physician who read the results. Fortunately, the test came back negative, but Jordan paid the bills out of pocket. By the time it was over she had spent $700 or $800.
In the corridor outside of Hagan’s office, Jordan passed Valerie White, an Asheboro resident who is president of the NC
Federation of Republican Women,
whose group had already delivered
their message, which was equally succinct
and exactly opposite: “No public
option.”
White said her contingent included
30-45 people, many of whom had left
by the time the MoveOn.org demonstrators
arrived.
“We need to focus on the ones that
don’t have insurance and leave the rest
of us alone,” White said.
White said that as an alternative
the federal government could provide
vouchers to the uninsured to purchase
policies, and that she favored lifting
restrictions on health insurance companies
so that they could operate across
state lines, thereby reducing costs and
increasing competition.”
White said she favored a more
focused approach to covering the uninsured.
“I think we need to figure out who we’re talking about,” she said. “When we talk about the uninsured, is it those that shouldn’t be in the country, those that don’t want it, or those that flat-out can’t afford it?”
Notwithstanding the arguments of MoveOn.org and those it represents that the public option is a compromise designed to close the coverage gap, White said, “What you have there is a lack of competition. A government-paid insurance program is going to put everybody else out of business. What business is going to pay private insurance if they can move their employees onto the government program?”
For liberal proponents of healthcare reform monitoring the legislative process as a handful of bills work their way through committee and elected representatives begin the Herculean task of reconciling a jumble of political imperatives, the “public option” remains at the heart of their hopes.
“I think they’re gaining momentum and getting support for the public option,” Jordan said, “even from some of the Democrats that were on the fence.” In response to the MoveOn.org rally, a Hagan staffer forwarded a statement made by the senator two days earlier applauding a recent healthcare reform bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee. The bill, in Hagan’s words, “prevents insurance companies from turning you away due to a preexisting condition, removes annual and lifetime caps on coverage, and removes co-pays for preventive services.” The bill approved by the Finance Committee does not include a provision for the public option. Hagan’s deputy press secretary, Sadie Weiner, noted that Hagan voted in favor of a Community Health Insurance Option in an earlier bill that passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on which she serves with fellow North Carolina Senator Richard Burr.
Weiner described the Community Health Insurance Option as “a backstop option for people without access to employer-sponsored healthcare.” The Rev. Jean Rodenbough, president of the left-leaning NC Council of Churches, said healthcare reform is a major focus of her organization at this time. “Personally, I am for universal, single-payer healthcare,” she said during the rally. “Because that is not going to be on the books yet, the public option is a requirement and a necessity.”
Hagan’s formal statement of Oct. 13 added that she was committed to a final bill “that slows down the skyrocketing cost of healthcare and prevents families from sinking into bankruptcy as a result of one medical emergency.”
Many of the MoveOn.org demonstrators nodded knowingly when Melvina Ray Davis, 55, of Greensboro, said she pays more for a health insurance policy to cover her retired husband now than she did to cover her entire family several years ago. She added that she has two college-educated daughters, neither of whom is insured.
“My daughter rides a bicycle to work every day,” Davis said. “I worry every day that if she gets hit, our family will be bankrupted.” !
Opponents of the public option meet with an aide to Sen. Kay Hagan (left) at the senator’s Greensboro office on Oct. 15. (photo by Jordan Green)
