Action Center

A Member's Story
Battling the Healthcare System

In the fall of 1988, Cathy Williams Kerns began to lose the vision in her left eye. The diagnosis was Multiple Sclerosis, a progressive and often disabling disease of the central nervous system. Even as the disease progressed, Kerns continued to help her husband run their successful Orlando advertising agency.

At first, health care coverage was not a problem, but then Kerns, an LWVOC member, left to start a company helping others living with disabilities, and her husband retired. Without their corporate health insurance coverage, the Kerns were forced to enroll in COBRA at a cost of $1,800 a month, and when that ran out, had to pay $2,200 a month for a rollover policy.

In May, Kerns testified before a U.S. Senate Finance Sub-Committee looking into affordable health care. She told them how she has to take 11 medicines a day, including a biologic drug to control MS that has soared in price from $978 a month 15 years ago to well over $5,000 today; how when her husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer of the esophagus two years ago that, despite being on Medicare, his co-pays and falling into the Medicare Part D donut hole ate into their "dwindling savings" and how living with MS can cost at least $30,000 per year for many patients.

"These healthcare issues apply to all age groups, especially those who, like me, are too young to qualify for Medicare or do not care to fight approximately 2.5 years an MS patients must wait to be approved for disability," Kerns testified. "The system needs to stay strong to service future generations and all my fellow baby boomers."

Testimony Before US Senate
Finance Sub-Committee
May 5, 2009

Priorities for Health Care Reform
Cathy Williams Kerns