Obama says he won’t give up on Melanie Shouse’s dream of health care reform [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Feb. 6--Melanie Shouse believed Barack Obama could reform health care, and the St. Louis activist worked hard to help get him to the White House.
She died last Saturday from breast cancer while battling her insurance company to pay for her chemotherapy treatment.
On Thursday night, President Obama cited her case in promising to continue working for health care legislation.
In a speech, Obama spoke of Shouse's death and her obituary in the Post-Dispatch.
"How can I say to her ... 'We're giving up'?" Obama said.
The president, however, acknowledged that health care ranks behind jobs as the country's No. 1 priority.
Shouse, 41, of Overland, died after a 41/2-year battle with breast cancer.
Her obituary reported that she waited months to go to a doctor after she began to feel sick in 2005. She explained that she could only afford so-called "catastrophic" health insurance -- a policy that required her to pay out $5,000 in deductibles before the insurance kicked in.
Shouse spent the last years of her life advocating that consumers "take on the Big Insurance Monopoly and liberate American families from the slavery of skyrocketing insurance premiums and canceled coverage, which leave millions of us in a state of perpetual fear and insecurity."
She wanted to live long enough to see Congress pass health care reform.
Obama, in comments Thursday night at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, said:
"I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer.
"She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama T-shirt."
(At her request, Shouse was cremated while wearing the T-shirt. Although she had health insurance, she said it denied her the coverage she needed to treat her cancer.)
Obama continued: "But think about this: She was fighting that whole time not just to get me elected, not even to get herself health insurance, but because she understood that there were others coming behind her who were going to find themselves in the same situation, and she didn't want somebody else going through that same thing.
"How can I say to her, 'You know what? We're giving up'? How can I say to her family, 'This is too hard'?"
Obama said he wanted to meet with Democrats, Republicans and independent experts, lay out the facts for the American people and then, he said, "I think that we have got to move forward on a vote."
But he said he would first work with Congress to enact a jobs package that would encourage new hiring, which he said was "the thing that is most urgent right now, in the minds of Americans all across the country."
Shouse's friends demonstrated in September outside the downtown headquarters of her insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, a subsidiary of Wellpoint.
Her family said the company wouldn't pay for a more expensive chemotherapy that Shouse believed would help her.
Deb Wiethop, a spokeswoman for Anthem, said Friday that she couldn't immediately confirm that Shouse was a customer.
She added: "However, everyone who hears a story like this is saddened. Responsible health care plans do not deny medical benefits based on costs. At Anthem, our coverage decisions are based on a member's benefit plan and the latest evidence-based, scientific research available that shows a particular treatment is safe and effective."
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