Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

When we featured this story back in November it seemed that real health care reform might actually happen.  Now, as we move closer to the new year and our legislators get deeper and deeper into the mire of political partisanship, it’s clear that reform is as far away as ever.  Meanwhile, people like our own Joan Thomas and her family still don’t have adequate health insurance.  Read Joan’s story:

MAKE WAVES’ media strategist Joan Grangenois-Thomas recently sat down with Wendy L. Wilson, news editor for Essence.com.  Wendy wanted to know about women who had lost their health insurance due to the loss of their husband’s job and what effects it was having.  As we come down to the wire in the debate over public options and other aspects of the healthcare reform bill in Congress, this interview demonstrates where the rubber meets the road. 

As the health care reform debate continues to heat up down partisan lines in Congress, more women are starting to see exactly how much we have at stake in this issue. According to a recent Joint Economic Committee report, “Comprehensive Health Care Reform: An Essential Prescription for Women,” an estimated 64 million women currently do not have health insurance in this country, a factor that is setting many of us up to fail as women have more pervasive and chronic health needs than men and tend to suffer higher economic fallout from bankruptcies brought on by medical bills.

Read the rest of Joan’s interview at Essence.com.