Last month, Montana rallied together for a statewide town hall to discuss the issue of health insurance reform. Before the incidents of aggression, before the hype, there was a true town hall: people gathering together to talk about how to fix our broken health care system.
Nine communities came together, in their own town halls, to join a statewide teleconference about the facts around health care reform: Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Havre, Helena, Kalispell, Libby, Miles City and Missoula all participated. Read more of KULR8's coverage here
Our conference began with five member panel of health care consumers struggler under the current system. Every day, working Montanans, these people bravely shared their stories with the entire state to advance the issues of health care reform.
Deb Mattern, a panelist, talked about her experience as a cancer survivor. She survived breast cancer only to be priced out of the market due to her and her husband's previous and current illnesses. Deb has to budget and save to afford the yearly mammograms that are recommended by her oncologist to maintain her health.
Watch Deb explain her story here:
Mike Craighill is another activist who spoke for the forum. A small business owner, Mike would like to provide insurance for all his employees, but finds himself unable to afford even basic coverage, due to the high cost of available health insurance. Mike also shared his personal struggle with our broken system. When a lack of affordable coverage caused his family to wait to send his daughter in for examination, her illness grew more advanced, painful, and costly to treat. Mike is speaking out on behalf of not only small businesses, but Montana families everywhere.
Watch Mike's story here:
After the panel spoke, each of the nine connected communities had the opportunity to address collected questions from the audience. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, at least one question from each site was answered by the panel.
After the teleconference portion was over, each of the communities broke away into small groups to address their own health care related concerns. Touching on issues from the personal, to the community, to nationwide, participants talked about how they thought their current system was working, and what they could to take action for the future.
Thanks to the amazing hard work of over 50 community volunteers, speakers, and one heck of a planning team, Montana came away from the community forum educated and fired up to work towards real reform. With over 400 participants statewide, including elected officials on the state and federal level, the event was a rousing success. Change can happen on the community level, Montana has proven it. Change that works.
Click here to download a complete report out of the Montana Talks Health event, including a complete list of sponsors, questions submitted, attendees, and panelist stories:
Montana Talks Health Discussion White Paper-2.doc
Click here to download the powerpoint presentation used for Montana Talks Health:
MT health care town hall meeting presentation-v2-1.pptx
Make sure to check out some more pictures from our enthusiastic activists below. For the complete sets, go to our sets on Flickr:
Billings
Fort Peck
Great Falls
Miles City
