June 18, 2009 09:10 PM UTC

Health Care Reform: What Motivates You?

• 1 Comments
• by: ranr

I’ve been asking, over the last couple of weeks, what people are doing about health care reform. Tonight, I attended a house meeting hosted by a nurse, Mike Kingsbury, in his home in Denver.

I’ve gotten to know Mike fairly well – he’s one of SEIU’s grassroots lobbyists. Before he was a lobbyist, though, he was a trauma nurse. In that capacity, he’s seen some of the worst casualties anyone working in a hospital can see. It was in that capacity, too, that he realized the need for health care reform.

“I started with 4 patients; soon, 4 became 6, 6 became 8 – and I found that I had no time to give them the care they needed. I told my supervisor about my concerns, but all she said was that I needed to do a better job.”

I heard stories from some of the other people in the room – but I was drawn to a woman sitting quietly in the corner. When the group broke to write letters to their senators, I followed her and asked her if I could talk to her.

Jenny spoke softly.

“I’ve been friends with Mike for a long time. I’m a graphic designer, and I’ve been self-employed for a little while,” she said. “I’ve had health insurance for most of my life, but because I’m an self-employed businesswoman, I’ve had to depend on my husband’s health coverage. Recently, though, he was laid off. We’ve had to depend on COBRA because of that – turns out that paying a third of the COBRA costs is cheaper than paying for private health insurance. The fact that the Administration has to subsidize COBRA [because of the current economy] is unfortunate. I think that everyone should have basic health insurance, and that’s why I’m here tonight.”

That’s what Jenny is doing about health care reform – what are you doing? If you want to know more and do more, sign up at our Facebook page, and keep following along at our state page.

Finally, tonight, join health care activists across America in a conversation about health care with Sen. Chris Dodd at 6 PM ET / 4 PM MT. If you want to know more about where legislation and health care reform are headed in Congress, this is the call to be on.