My name is Liz Helms.  I have a personal story that affected my life for many, many years.  I had two insurance companies and needed a surgical procedure, and both of them denied access to that surgical procedure.  What put my life into a tailspin.

My doctor, thank goodness for him, decided not to let a third party insurer make a decision on how he was going to treat a patient.  He did the surgery and he took the risk.  But ultimately, what happened to me through that is I ended up going through a medical bankruptcy, which devastated my life, ruined my credit, and took ten years to be able to pull myself out, to get everything back into a really good place.

And prior to that, my credit was really good.  So that was devastating for me, and health care shouldn’t do that to people.  No one should have to experience what I went through, especially when they have coverage. 

So look at it today.  health care is very expensive.  Today, my health plan runs me over $1300 a month for my husband and myself.  $1300 a month.  That comes every 30 days.  That’s a lot that I have to plan for every single month.  And on top of that, the deductibles on that policy are very high.  I’m very fearful that if I had a devastating illness again, I could end up back in the same place and start all over again.  No one should have to go through that. 

health care needs to be affordable.  Everyone should be able to access some type of health insurance, and not based because you have a pre-existing condition.  Pre-existing conditions happen to people routinely.  There are millions of people that have chronic illnesses.  And when a health plan kicks you out or says you have to go into a high-risk pool just because you have an illness that may not have a huge impact on cost, but it puts you in another place where it’s going to cost you a lot of money, that is unacceptable in today’s marketplace.

So we need to do a lot of health reform, and I certainly applaud the governor for what he’s doing in making health reform a top priority.  Having individual coverage for health insurance to help the people that are working poor is top priority.  Everyone should be able to access health insurance, some type.  We shouldn’t end up in emergency rooms, rising costs of health care there.  We shouldn’t have to worry about tomorrow not being able to buy food because we have a health bill that is looming in front of us.  It’s ridiculous.  And together, we could all make a difference and really work on making reforms better for people.