After the meeting, the naysayers -- admitted fans of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) -- argue that the real problem is all their neighbors running to the emergency room for any little ailment. A few miles down the road, I find Saint Joseph Hospital in London just off the interstate. In the emergency room, I find only deeper mistrust in the system.
Deborah Brown, 56, had brought her husband in. He recently had a stroke and now there were blood pressure worries and complications. Although they had an appointment with their physician for the next day, he had told them to go to the ER. Brown says she had to borrow her sister-in-law’s GMC Envoy to make the 26-mile drive.
Brown is convinced Obamacare will just help the rich. “He’s going against his word,” she explains. "He made all those promises about how he was going to help the poor, the elderly."
Danielle Smith, 26, sits in the back of the waiting room with her blond 19-month-old son. Something, she is convinced, has burrowed inside a crevice in her son's ear. Maybe it's a tick. She drove 20 miles to Saint Joseph, skipping another hospital near her home. She says she doesn't trust that place.
A half-hour later, Smith marches out of an exam room clutching her boy and looking even more determined. “They said it was a freckle,” she explains, rushing to her car in the darkened, quiet lot. “So we’re going to get a second opinion.” The night was still young. It was 9 p.m.
Pretty soon, Christopher McClure hobbles through the doors, his inner thigh hurting from what he suspects are a pair of spider bites. He is not employed and does not have health insurance. His wife Michelle, 29, works as an assistant manager at a pizza chain making $12,000 a year. She also has no insurance and would qualify for the Medicaid expansion. But she's against Obamacare, convinced that it will wipe out her meager earnings. “Next enrollment season," she says, "they’re going to sock it to me.”
