Single Mom Fights To Give Daughter A Chance

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 24 Sep 2008 - 10:00 PDT

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"I'm a very hard-working single mom, but my income puts me in the no man's land of making too much for assistance but not enough to support my daughter and me," explains Carolyn Freeman of Cottonwood, Ariz. "I make sure my daughter has health insurance, but it comes with lifetime exclusion for anything related to her stomach.

"I pay $69.95 a month for a 'discount plan' for myself that saves me very little and requires me to travel 50 to 100 miles to a doctor who accepts the plan. I have three test orders from my doctor, including an endoscopy and sonogram, but I simply can't afford them.

"I have no retirement funds or savings whatsoever, we buy our clothes at Goodwill, only buy food that's on sale, drive a 14-year-old pickup with bad tires, closely watch our energy consumption, cash in our friends' aluminum cans, and we rent because we can't afford the inflated housing prices in this area. My daughter recently turned 18 and the Social Security income from her father's death has ended, reducing our income by half.

"I had to recently moved-in temporarily with my sister and her family in San Antonio. There was no way I could continue to live in our rental home, as the Social Security had been paying for the rent each month. Kelsey is living with friends back home and looking for a job.

"I was brought up with a strong sense of personal responsibility and ethics. I pay my bills, worry about how to buy food and gasoline later, and take on additional work dog-sitting or cleaning vacated apartments. But our government must place healthcare at the top of their to-do list-otherwise, we will be a nation of either obscenely rich or destitute, with nothing in between. It's time for our federal and state governments to rectify this situation."

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Sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

Eighty-two percent of Americans think the U.S. healthcare system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt (Commonwealth Fund, Aug. 7, 2008). America's nurses know that only single-payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all will fix our broken system and the tragedy of our devastated families. HR 676, by U.S. Rep John Conyers, is the most comprehensive, cost effective way to achieve guaranteed healthcare for all.

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