Pam and her husband Rusty live in Eutaw, a small town in rural Alabama. They moved from Louisiana to care for both of their elderly parents. Right now, they live about 10 minutes from their closest hospital, Greene County Hospital. But if that hospital were to close, it would be devastating for residents like Pam and Rusty. “People would be in a bind,” Rusty said. “Tuscaloosa’s a long way from here when you’re bleeding or broken.”
When Pam and Rusty moved to Alabama, they lost their health insurance, and Pam was worried about her health. After having overcome breast cancer several years before, she worries what would happen if it came back. If she had access to health insurance, she knows she’d have a better chance at catching a reoccurrence early.
“We don’t want a handout from Medicaid,” Pam said. “We are the blue-collar workers. We’re the ones that are at the bottom that hold the pyramid up and people forget about us. We pay our taxes.”
But without Medicaid expansion, working adults struggle to get access to health insurance, which could mean that hospitals like Greene County Hospital provide too much uncompensated care to stay viable.
Note: After Pam met with ACS CAN staff, they were able to help her apply for and enroll in Medicaid through the Alabama Breast and Cervical Cancer program. She is now covered by Medicaid and is able to get the screenings she needs to be sure her cancer is staying at bay – but she still worries about what would happen if her local hospital were to close, and she didn’t have easy access to the care she needed.
Want to see more of Pam and Rusty’s story? Watch On the Edge: Health Care in Alabama, a short film featuring community members and health professionals from across North Carolina sharing their challenges and triumphs as they strive to take care of themselves, their families, and their communities.