MY LETTER TO THE LEGISLATURE

  













The following letter is being sent to all 104 members of the Utah Senate and Utah House of Representatives.

 01/05/15

Dear Legislator,

In November of 2008, I went a check-up with a new primary care doctor. The appointment was far from routine. I was told that I had end stage kidney failure, and would need a kidney transplant.  That was scary enough. The fact that I had no health insurance (I worked part time, and divided the rest of my time between college and being a care giver for my niece and nephew) made it flat out terrifying.  I was lucky, because the generosity of friends and strangers was overwhelming. First of all, a good friend donated his kidney to me, then my friends teamed with generous organizations to raise $10,000  that would go towards my medical bills. As moving as astounding as this was, it wasn’t enough to get me the surgery. The transplant surgery itself cost $79,000.  My kidneys were in bad enough shape that a separate surgery to remove them was required. The medications I needed to keep my body from rejecting the kidney would cost roughly the same amount per month as rent on a one-bedroom apartment. In the end, I was able to receive this lifesaving surgery because of a great nation and state which has the wisdom and compassion to use programs such as Medicaid to help those who need it.               

Everybody who doesn’t have health insurance now deserves the same chance I had.  Because I believe this I have become an active supporter of and advocate for Governor Herbert’s Healthy Utah plan.  I have gotten to know many of the people in the coverage gap as I worked to tell their stories in my documentary film Entitled to Life. Tens of thousands of Utahns who fall within the “Medicaid Gap” are losing their health or their lives to the delay on expanding Medicaid, and we can help them by implementing Healthy Utah plan.  The suggestions of the Health Reform Task Force are insufficient and ineffective. Tens of thousands of needy Utahns will be left out, and as good as our charity care system is, it cannot provide them the specialty care they need. Take Stacy Stanford, one of the patients profiled in my film: she will remain without coverage for the same reason she can’t get disability Medicaid now: she can’t afford to get the diagnosis which documents the neurological condition which makes her “medically frail”. Charity care can’t get her this, for the reasons I’ve detailed above. Stacy is living proof that the “medically frail” options don’t work. Some have suggested that the Healthy Utah opponents in our legislature are heartless. I do not agree. They are decent, caring human beings. Their failing is that they are so blinded by ideology they refuse to see obvious facts staring them in the face. But the tragedy is that innocent people will suffer, because poverty and illness are immune to ideology.

            As a lifelong Utahn, and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I firmly believe that only Healthy Utah fits all of the criteria the Church set forth for a principled approach.  We are a state which values families, and the Christian concepts of justice and mercy. We can’t make families suffer for our political ideals, and a system which leaves tens of thousands of working Utahns without any access to real health coverage clearly doesn’t fit any reasonable definition of justice or mercy.  Please look into your heart and support Healthy Utah in the upcoming legislative session. It’s not about right and left, it’s about right and wrong.

Sincerely,
Paul Gibbs