VOP Front Porch Diaries

Kelsey Miller

Southwest Team

When I met Mark, he was perched on the porch having a post-supper swing.  The television sounded loudly, a car dealership advertisement, and his wife was at work.  She was lucky, he said, to have a part-time job. Happening upon someone on their porch can often be the most awkward encounter or most fruitful.  Every day, it baffles me, the willingness of folks to share their entire life’s story.  Mark developed a back problem a few years back, in part due to the manual labor requirements of his job.  Not working was not an option; he’d worked all his life, 20 years for the same employer.  The company, who did provide insurance, figured Mark was too costly for the economic times—medical insurance and tenure—so they made the decision for him. 

 Out of work for three months, Mark reaching the end of his health insurance coverage.  Three times each year, he must travel to Roanoke for injections that ease years of grinding back pain. With insurance, he would pay $300 per treatment.  Without insurance, it will cost him $900.  Without steady income, it’s nearly impossible to pay rising electricity and fuel bills on top of newly assumed medical cost.

 No one had ever asked Mark’s opinion or to hear his story.  Wielding only a pen, clipboard and attentive ears, we are provided the means of giving someone a place.  My eyes are opened to the millions of Americans who fall “in between.”  In Southwest Virginia and all across the state, many folks, like Mark, are between jobs.  Wasting no time, we must collectively lift up Mark’s needs, making sure our health care system provides nationwide security.