President's Perspective
A Personal Take on Need for Health-Care Reform

(Oct. 30, 2009) If you look through WBNG’s Web site, you’ll see a link to modest-size selection of Web sites and opinions on health-care reform, some of which don’t necessarily share the worldview of our parent organization, the Communications Workers of America. But you're all adults, and you can come to your own conclusions on issues of vital importance to our community and our country.
       
But when the latest combined issue of the Guild Reporter and CWA News came to my mailbox, I was stunned to read an account about someone I know – someone I consider a friend – who has been battling cancer and is now behind the 8-ball on health care.

Her name is Linda Preuss, and she’s spent most of her adult life working for suburban-Detroit daily papers. I had the good fortune to first meet her in Cleveland in 2000 at a Newspaper Guild conference, and we’ve been fast friends ever since, talking and laughing over the phone. And on a trip to my native Detroit last year, I was able to have breakfast with her.

And what's happened to her since that breakfast you wouldn’t wish on yourself, or anyone else you know. Here is her story (from the CWA News):

A year ago, Linda Preuss had a steady paycheck and her employer picked up most of her health care costs. Then she got cancer.

Now she pays $724 a month for insurance, plus co-payments for her many doctors’ appointments. And she has to do it on a retirement income of $2,500 a month – a third less than she was making at the Macomb Daily newspaper outside of Detroit.

“I think, 'Can I pay my rent? Can I make my car payment?'” says Preuss, 62. "But I know I’m blessed. I look at some of these poor people in the chemo room, they get dropped off by a taxi because they’re all alone. And I think, 'Oh my God, how psychologically, emotionally, physically and financially draining it must be for them.'”

Preuss, a member of TNG-CWA Local 34022, laid out advertisements and otherwise helped things run smoothly at the Macomb paper for 34 years. In the summer of 2008, just two months after getting a clean bill of health at her annual exam, she felt fatigued but chalked it up to stress at work.

When she saw her doctor a few weeks later she was stunned to learn she had bladder cancer. In November 2008, she had a 14-hour surgery to remove her bladder, construct a new one and take out 27 potentially cancerous lymph nodes.

But the cancer had spread further than anyone knew and six months later, doctors told Preuss she’d need a heavy regimen of chemotherapy. Her health demanded that she retire from her job. She could maintain her insurance through COBRA. It’s expensive.

She’s cut back where she can, even on prescriptions doctors have urged her to take for pain management. She occasionally takes medication that her insurance covers, but one prescription was going to cost $80 – per pill. She passed on it.

Preuss is extremely grateful to her Guild local and her newspaper for a bowl-a-thon and other fundraisers that have raised several thousand dollars for her. She said some of that will go toward her deductible for a second surgery she will need this November.

Watching opponents of health care reform holler and wave cruel signs on TV is so discouraging she often just turns it off. “I think, 'If you only knew,'” she says. “It’s depressing, very, very depressing, because there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.

“People are going to believe what they believe until they walk in your shoes.”

Bowl-a-thons to pay medical bills? I like bowling – WBNG gets up a team every year for the D.C. AFL-CIO Community Services Agency’s “Bowling for Gold” fundraiser – but charity is no substitute for justice.