Detroit Free Press Rochelle Riley column

March 02--If you want to hear what bankruptcy sounds like, listen to Diane Philpot.

Nineteen years after her 28-year-old husband, Officer Jerry Philpot, was killed in the line of duty, she will lose the health care the city promised her and her daughter. Emergency manager Kevyn Orr doesn't know her personally. She's just a number in a plan of adjustment he submitted to the court to take Detroit out of bankruptcy, a plan that treats survivors like retirees.

But bankruptcy is personal -- to 21,000 retirees and the 150 survivors of slain officers and firefighters.

"I stayed home to take care of my daughter," Diane Philpot said. "She's 19, just turned 19. I was a victim when my husband was killed. Then I became a survivor. Now I'm back to being a victim again. It's almost like his death does not matter. So he gave up his life, and now you get to give up some more stuff."

Try entering the job market at 52 with no recent experience and a 19-year-old resume.

Syri Harris, a widowed mother of six, can empathize. She felt as if she'd entered the job market when she began looking for a plan to supplement the $200 stipend she was expected to receive by March 1 because her husband, Walter Harris, died fighting a fire on the city's east side in 2008.

-- Rochelle Riley: Detroit firefighter's widow wants Orr to remember the families

After weeks of attending meetings, studying plans on the Affordable Care Act exchange and talking to agents, she chose an $800-a-month plan to cover herself and her three children still living at home.

"We were inundated with information from Blue Cross and HAP and others in the marketplace trying to get our business," she said. "I've gone to numerous informational sessions to see what was the best fit for our family. It's like another job.

"I became so frustrated because you have to find the right fit, and your specific situation determines what you need. I can't imagine older retirees who don't have the support or don't understand all the information doing this on their own."

Harris has volunteered to help some retirees navigate the maze so they won't face the snafu she did. She bought insurance to begin on March 1Feb. 1. The city got that same notification and cut off her health insurance.

"I couldn't cancel because I had two children who needed insurance," she said. "One needed to go to the emergency room, and one had a doctor's appointment. So I had to pay the first month with a credit card because I don't have 800 extra dollars. They're promising they'll look into it."

Philpot, whose husband's pension is only about $24,000 a year, found a $4,000-a-year plan with $2,500 per-person, annual deductibles for herself and her 19-year-old daughter, an out-of-state college student. So she took a job at JCPenney to make ends meet.

"They're basically making me give up most of my pension," she said, "because that's what it's going to take just to pay for health care."

As the bankruptcy continues through the courts, it is vitally important for those involved to remember that while it is numbers and calculations and fixes and budgets, it also is personal.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.

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