Tell Them This Is Wrong
Meanwhile, Beyond the Politics ....
There is a strange realm beyond the Beltway, where political rhetoric gives way to something that is, apparently, far less value.
The situation on the ground, such as the phrase goes, involves more than ratings battles between cable news networks and perpetual-campaign electoral bickering. That is, beyond the Beltway there is something called
reality.
On the campaign trail, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was still blasting the new health-care law as unsalvageable. At the White House, President Obama was still apologizing for the botched federal Web site.
But in a state where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been busy signing people up: cashiers from the IGA grocery, clerks from the dollar store, workers from the lock factory, call-center agents, laid-off coal miners, KFC cooks, Chinese green-card holders in town to teach Appalachian students.
Now it was the beginning of another day, and a man Lively would list as Client 375 sat across from her in her office at a health clinic next to a Hardee’s.
“So, is that Breathitt County?” she asked Woodrow Wilson Noble as she tapped his information into a laptop Thursday morning.
“Yeah, we live on this side of the hill,” said Noble, whose family farm had gone under, who lived on food stamps and what his mother could spare, and who was about to hear whether he would have health insurance for the first time in his 60-year-old life.
This is how things are going in Kentucky: As conservatives argued that the new health-care law will wreck the economy, as liberals argued it will save billions, as many Americans raged at losing old health plans and some analysts warned that a disproportionate influx of the sick and the poor could wreck the new health-care model, Lively was telling Noble something he did not expect to hear.
“All right,” she said. “We’ve got you eligible for Medicaid.”
(McCrummen)
It's actually a depressing read, even for those who support the PPACA. Stephanie McCrummen essentially chronicles the work of Courtney Lively as she signs up several rural Kentuckians for health insurance.
Lively, who has been signing people up since the exchanges opened in early October, said one woman cried when she was told she qualified for Medicaid under the new law. She said people have been “pouring in” to her office, an unused exam room in the back of the clinic, where her set-up includes a table, a two-drawer filing cabinet, manila folders, a planner to track her schedule, a notebook to track her numbers and a laptop that connects to the state health-insurance exchange, Kynect.
Clinic doctors often send patients without insurance her way after their visits, but most come by word of mouth. Lively has signed up fathers who then sent their sons, and mothers who sent aunts. She signed up one Subway sandwich shop worker, and soon what seemed like the whole staff showed up.
Although she once had to dispel a rumor that enrolling involved planting a microchip in your arm, and though she avoids calling the new law “Obamacare” in a red state, most people need little persuading.
It is easy enough to chuckle when Ronald Hudson hears what assistance he qualifies for and says, "Well, thank God. I believe I'm going to be a Democrat."
But to some degree it's hard to celebrate; there is certainly joy as Jeff Fletcher slaps the table and claps his hands "I'm covered? Woo-hoo! I can go to the doctor now? I'm serious. I need to go."
It is also heartbreaking. We might say whatever we want about the guy with five kids and a pretax income of fourteen thousand dollars, or the thirty-six year-old man with cirrhosis who had to be hauled down to Lively's office by his mother, or the
mother of eleven trying to get that much healthcare for that many people. Say what you will of the drinkers and smokers and people who can't seem to stop making babies. But in the end, these are all
human beings, and while Republicans take smug pleasure in the troubles plaguing the federal and several state health exchange websites, these people are the genuine stakes in a titanic political fight.
Say what you want about how these people ended up in whatever condition we find them.
And then look any one of them in the eye and tell them to hurry up and die, already. Tell Mr. Fletcher, who lives under the shadow of lung cancer, that each day when he wakes up and thinks about that spot on his lung that he hasn't followed up on for years because he can't afford it to be thankful for life, and then explain that he really ought not have the reassurance of knowing whether or not he is next in the family line of lung cancer casualties because it might make Mitch McConnell sad if this health reform thing works.
The per-capita income in Breathitt is about $15,000, and the rates of diabetes, hypertension and other health problems earned this part of Kentucky the nickname “Coronary Valley.”
When I think of how people accuse coastal, urban liberals of hating rural areas and the middle of the country, the rhetoric really does come into sharp focus. The four hundred ninety five square miles comprising Breathitt County, Kentucky sustain an estimated population of 13,635. Its history boasts fascinating trivia, such as the idea that Breathitt was the only county in the entire nation, during World War I, that filled its service quotas without a draft. Indeed, Kentuckians, including those from present-day "Coronary Valley", ranked among the most physically fit. Those days are long over; Breathitt County today is, as Courtney Lively describes it, "Just poor."
That they should have access to health insurance troubles their U.S. Senate delegation.
Three words:
Quality of life.
They mean
nothing to Beltway Republicans. They mean
everything in the world to the person living that life.
It's a depressing read, to be certain. But it is also a vital reminder that this is about much more than just how
smug our Republican neighbors get to feel about the human suffering they are working so hard to inflict, perpetuate, and augment.
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Notes:
McCrummen, Stephanie. "In rural Kentucky, health-care debate takes back seat as the long-uninsured line up". The Washington Post. November 23, 2013. WashingtonPost.com. November 23, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...9dc6e0-5465-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html
See Also:
Wikipedia. "Breathitt County, Kentucky". November 7, 2013. En.Wikipedia.org. November 23, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathitt_County,_Kentucky
