Gary’s story
By
leslie ⋅ October 12, 2008
⋅ Gary Mitchell is a musician — a gifted choral director and tenor. He’s the music director at my church, which is a part-time job and doesn’t carry insurance.
Gary’s spouse is a minister and has insurance, but the policy doesn’t cover domestic partners, and in North Carolina, Gary can’t marry his domestic partner, the Rev. David Eck, so he lives in fear of getting sick.
Gary and David have raised two adopted children. They’re both good, kind people. They have a modest home here in Asheville, which they likely would lose if Gary got sick.
Because he has had medical issues in the past, private insurance would cost him $1,300 a month. He bought a policy that will cover up to $50,000 in a catastrophic event. In other words, one major surgery. Chemo costs more than that.
Gary worked for the school system as a high school teacher and choral director for many years, so once he turns 62 — well over a decade from now — he can get coverage again under the state plan.
“My health plan right now is to pray I stay healthy,” he says.
Discussion
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We need your help now more than ever. Your tax-deductible donation will help us get Patient Pals and Family Friends off the ground. Please consider a gift in honor or in memory of a loved one.
Patient Pals & Family Friends volunteer training
Our Feb. 27 training had to be postponed, but we have rescheduled. Join us 10 days, as we train our next group of volunteers for Patient Pals & Family Friends. The four-hour training will run 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and will include lunch. Patient Pals are people who have experience with an illness or disability. After training, they will be paired with someone who is newly diagnosed or disabled. Family Friends will be volunteers who are paired with family members of people who are ill or disabled, and will have been through the expeience of having a loved one with illness or disability. In Loving Memory
Life o' Mike has participated two memorial services to remember those who have died from our broken health care system, one in Asheville and one in Raleigh.
If you would like to organize more of these services, please contact lifeomike@gmail.com and we will help put it together.
The services include stories, prayers and information on how people of faith can make a difference.
About 45,000 people die each year because they don’t have health insurance, according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That breaks down to one American every 12 minutes.
Those people can be honored in the service by a bell chime and a moment of silence every 12 minutes in the service.
For more information, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712.
Contact your representatives
Ask them what they're doing to fix health care!
I\’m an RN at a local hospital here in NC. It seems that every time I go into work, I hear stories from my patients about how their health insurance is lacking. I\’ve taken care of a grandmother after a hip replacement whose insurance wouldn\’t pay for her to go to rehab — she was the sole caregiver for her 3 school-aged grandchildren and had to go home, on her own, to recover. I cared for a gentleman who, after several extensive surgeries, was left with large, gaping wounds and several skin grafts on his abdomen. He told me that his insurance would not pay for the dressing supplies he needed for his wounds, unless he had a home health nurse, which he didn\’t need. There was also a woman whose insurance would not pay for the medication she needed to battle a severe infection of a foot wound after she had recovered from a blood clot in her leg. It was $1600 for a one-month supply — the insurance company said it was unnecessary.
As a healthcare worker, I strive to provide the best care I can for my patients every day. Unfortunately, our healthcare system in America can\’t say the same.