Scott near Columbia City, Indiana

Scott near Columbia City, Indiana
Originally uploaded by walk4healthcare

“I’m unemployed,” Scott told me, “and don’t have no insurance. But, I’ve been pretty healthy, ‘cept my teeth here—gotta work on that sometime.” I nodded. His girlfriend called (this was a common occurrence as she seemed to call every five minutes).

“The difficult story is with my girlfriend. She works part-time and also no insurance. She makes too much for HIP (Indiana public assistance program) so that’s that. A few months ago, she had a kidney stone and the local hospital wouldn’t take care of her so they sent her to Indianapolis. The pain was so bad and she ended up having some operation there.” He said that there was no way they could pay any of the bills being that they were barely making ends meet. We drove by the trailer park that was their home and he told me how they were lucky, that the next trailer park up in Columbia City had been recently hit by a tornado and a few homes destroyed. Throughout the trip Scott was glowingly optimistic. But as he was about to drop me off, his face turned sour. “Tell those knuckleheads in Washington to get with it out there.”