Young and uninsured
For those of you who haven't notice the VL site has a new feature on the home page, its a poll with the question "What issue effects you the most?"
I notice that health care is leading, so I thought I share this article on young people without health care.
By: Ben Adler
In the year between his graduation from college and his first year in law school, Jeff Traylor, 25, worked in a restaurant and was similar to approximately 44 million Americans in this respect: He had no health insurance.
As a waiter, Traylor worked fewer than 30 hours a week and thus did not qualify for insurance as a full-time employee.
“I had to go to low-income clinics,” said Traylor, now a second-year student at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore.
“That’s $130 for a visit to get antibiotics for a sinus infection, plus the cost of the drug. I could afford it. But some people cannot.”
More recently, Traylor’s girlfriend — Amanda Caffall, 25, a service industry worker who hopes to start law school next fall — delayed treatment for ringworm for a month for the same reason: She had no health insurance and couldn’t afford a visit to the doctor.
Spurred by his own experience and by his concern for the uninsured, Traylor created a group on the social networking site Facebook to promote universal health care.
His is one of more than 20 groups on Facebook dedicated to advocating expanded government health coverage, and many of them have hundreds of members.
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