‘This is unacceptable’ | National tour stops in Wilmington to rally for better healthcare costs – WDEL 1150AM
“I have Christopher, who lives at home. Christopher has 12 pieces of medical equipment,” said Nancy Lemus. “I can’t tell my son, ‘You can’t have oxygen today.’ Or, ‘We’re not going to hook up your feeding tube today, because you’re going to make my electric bill go up higher.'”
At Wilmington’s Chase Center on the Riverfront Tuesday, August 17, 2021, Lemus joined the national Protect Our Care bus tour seeking better healthcare coverage for Americans. For the last 16 years, Lemus said she’s struggled to maintain insurance coverage, and while she currently has coverage for both her and her son Christopher Garcia thanks to the scaled payment options from West Side Healthcare, sometimes she struggles with paying for medications she needs because of costs.
State leaders like U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, state Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, and Treasurer Colleen Davis joined Lemus and members of the Protect Our Care campaign during their stop in Wilmington to rally for better healthcare for millions of Americans.
U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester speaks at a Protect Our Care rally
“Protecting our healthcare–healthcare for all of us–is a primary goal, target, responsibility, vision, dream, and reality that we do not want to go back on,” Blunt Rochester said. “It makes no sense in our country, that we should pay two, three, even 10 times more for drugs than other countries pay. And the realization that if you can’t afford it, you don’t have it.”
They would keep spreading the message until the cause was acknowledged and remedied in Washington, the congresswoman said, and she said President Joe Biden is aware of the need to make healthcare more accessible for all, and now is the time for the country to get it done.
“Four years ago, I walked into a doctor’s office with a nagging cough and walked out with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis. I’m still here today because the Affordable Care Act saved my life,” said Laura Packard, a healthcare advocate based in Denver. “But that’s just the start. We live in a time right now where we can expand health care to millions more Americans that desperately need it.”
Packard said a drug offered to help her immune system recover during chemotherapy wasn’t covered by insurance, and the out-of-pocket cost would’ve been $13,000. She had to go without it.
“Nobody should have to live like this in the richest country in the world,” Packard said. “My particular drug was built on taxpayer research; we already paid for it. Most drugs are built on research that we are paying for. And yet we have to pay, and pay again. We pay more than any other country for our drugs, and that means too many Americans can’t get the prescriptions they desperately need.”
Davis, currently the treasurer for the state but also previously treasurer for the Delaware Physician Assistant Advocacy Group (DAPA) and a board member for the Advisory Board of Forge Life Sciences, recalled a young woman hospitalized due to diabetic ketoacidosis because she’d chosen to make her car payment instead of paying for the inulin she needed, thinking she’d be able to get by on what she had.
“We have no out-of-pocket limit for prescription drugs. Individuals on Medicare are the only insured Americans to have no cap on their out-of-pocket medication costs and in 2019, the average cost for specialty medications surpassed $1,000,” Davis said.
From left, state Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, Treasurer Colleen Davis, and state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown speak with a representative from the Protect Our Care campaign.
Which was the whole reason the group was gathered Tuesday, state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown said.
“We’re here because we’re tired. You’re tired. Tired of being forced to choose between paying for your medications, or paying your bills, paying your utilities, putting food on your table,” said Minor-Brown, who shared her own story of having to come up with $200 a month to pay for gestational diabetes insulin.
“Right now, Americans pay three times the amount for prescription drugs that other countries are paying. And this is unacceptable,” she said. “Reducing healthcare costs and providing affordable healthcare that would increase the quality of life of Delawareans and individuals throughout our country. And once again, it will allow uninsured individuals to gain coverage and allow for millions of people to save on healthcare costs so that they can pay their bills. It would address the disparities in our marginalized communities. Expanding Medicare benefits, and capping out-of-pocket medication costs that will uplift our most vulnerable citizens, such as our seniors and those with disabilities who we’re failing every day by allowing them to struggle with dental problems, poor vision, and hearing loss because there were worried about cost because of inability to pay.”