Darlene Hooley: “Last weekend I was at home, Mr. Speaker, in Oregon, and I was at a community health program. I talked to some of the…”

“Last weekend I was at home, Mr. Speaker, in Oregon, and I was at a community health program. I talked to some of the people there. I think it is helpful to hear some real life stories. I can give a lot of them, but let me just repeat a couple. I was talking to one woman who had three children, two smaller ones and a child that was 9. She had no health care coverage. She was working. She worked for $6.50 an hour. She was working about 26 hours a week. Her employer provided no health insurance for either her or her children. Her husband worked. He had a very low base pay. He worked on commissions. Some months he made better than others. In Oregon we have what is called an Oregon Health Plan, but because you have to be consistently at a certain pay level, some months he made more so he was not eligible, and then the months that he made less, by the time he got eligible he was into a month where he made more. But the fact is, they never had enough money for insurance. So they have three children, both parents are working, he is working full-time, she is working more than half-time, neither company provides insurance for their children. They are living really month to month, and in this instance, they were able to go to a community health program where they paid on a sliding scale and got some attention, but it is very difficult. It is a community health program that has too many patients, no more room to expand, so they are also restricting the number of people they can see.”