Umstead Park UCC defends the right to be healthy
How did Sarah Witt and her Umstead Park UCC team of 15 volunteers get to be one of the three most active lobbying groups to descend upon the NC General Assembly?
What is it that they expect the NC General Assembly to do to get them to go away?
Sarah Witt was a marathon runner whose final race put her in the top three women in her last attempt at a half marathon. At the time she was the editor of the high tech e-magazine "Portal". Both she and her husband had been on the staff of a prestigious West Coast information magazine.
Their health was pristine. They didn’t have a care in the world. Following that race, a feeling Sarah had that something was wrong became confirmed. Sarah had excellent insurance, so why should she worry about a health issue? To Sarah’s credit many of the races she had run were in fact charity events to raise money for health care causes.
During the next couple of years she got the run around by doctors who didn’t have the time to find out exactly was causing her to have difficulty walking. They were too worried about not meeting their quota so that they could pay their bills.
It wasn’t until Sarah went to Duke Clinics and met a different kind of doctor, Richard S. Bedlack, M.D., Ph.D, that she got a straight answer. He wasn’t pressed to get the patient in and out in 15 minutes or less. He took the time to listen to what had been going on in Sarah’s life.
She had a rare disease, Spastic Paraplegia, which has a genetic link. She can’t walk and she can’t talk loud enough to be heard. Technology, very expensive technology, has given her mobility and a voice. Fifteen friends have given her a team that can get heard.
Sarah and her friends don’t all have the same personal experiences with healthcare. Some have lived lives free of pain and hurt. Others have had personal events in their lives that have left them permanently scarred. Some work for large companies and have gold plated insurance plans. Others work for hourly concerns that lack the ability to insurance their workers.
What they want is that every person in North Carolina gets equal access to medical aid professionals when they are in need, and that they get that access without being driven into debt. They have been supporting a series of bills that bring health care insurance closer to the people who need it. By chipping away at one issue at a time they hope to move the whole issue forward.
An example of this is the support for Governor Mike Easley’s proposal to cover all children whose families earn less than 300% of the poverty level. This would address a large segment of the children whose families earn too little to buy even the lowest cost private insurances.
What Sarah and her team of Lobbyists have done is to reach the vaunted level of one of the three most active lobbying groups in the NC General Assembly. At least that’s the word that’s some members have been passing around.
There is no way to tell how the whole lobbying effort will turn out, but Sarah and her band are showing that they know how to run the race.
