Reform can’t wait

As reported by The Spokesman-Review (“Murray says health reform will advance,” Aug. 21), about two dozen demonstrators opposing the public option protested outside the Spokane Club last Thursday while Sen. Patty Murray spoke to the Spokane Rotary Club. That’s not a huge turnout for a community this size.

I was among the more than 6,000 constituents who wrote to the senator to share our personal health care stories, and I am asking her support for a public option. I was honored to be invited to the roundtable discussion with Sen. Murray at Revival Lighting following the Rotary meeting.

At this meeting, Sen. Murray listened as participants shared their struggles to provide affordable, comprehensive health care coverage to employees, heard from individuals not able to get insurance due to pre-existing conditions, heard of young lives financially ruined because of medical collections, and learned about insurance companies routinely denying care and lifesaving treatment to their insured. I spoke of a two-year struggle to get covered claims paid.

It’s apparent that health care insurance in its present form isn’t working for American middle-class families. It has become too expensive, too uncertain, and it’s destroying our economy. Reform is needed now.

Doreen Fox Kelsey

Spokane