Guaranteed Healthcare

"I feel completely trapped by needing to remain below the poverty level in order to have medical and prescription coverage, which I must do everything in my power to have since I have chronic illnesses.  It affects everything - my career (what career?), my relationships, my credit, my self-esteem, my mental health, where I live, my peace of mind, and the very health I am trying to protect," said Vanessa Beck of Chicago, Ill.  Read previous casualties >>

Vanessa stayed on her mother’s insurance for as long as she could. As a young person with a chronic disease, finding health insurance outside of a work environment was nearly impossible. "I am told that stress makes my Crohn's disease worse and to avoid it.  How am I supposed to avoid stress when I have to constantly search and research and fight and advocate and sometimes lie just to be able to see the doctor?  Since adulthood, every major decision I have made has been largely or in part based on how I can secure medical treatment and medications," she added.

“There was landing my dream job out of college and having to quit because they couldn't afford to offer health insurance.  There was losing another job due to the entire days, days and a half, that I would have to spend waiting in clinics to be seen by a sliding-scale doctor.  There was skipping appointments because I couldn't afford the seemingly reasonable $40 co-pay which is no longer reasonable when I found myself going to the doctor three times a week.  There was having to work under the table, off the books, with no job security, no sick days, not accumulating Social Security credits so that I might qualify for Medicaid,” said Vanessa, expressing the total frustration of fighting for her life in and out of the private health insurance “market.”

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 guarantees health coverage for everyone, assures choice of physician and hospital, controls costs, slashes administrative waste, and returns care decisions to patients and doctors, not insurance companies.