View the Goldman's Health Care Story.
Barry and Lynn Goldman are small business owners.
(Lynn) My name is Lynn Goldman.
(Barry) And I’m Barry Goldman. We’re the owners of Coffee Roasters International in Woburn, where we roast gourmet estate coffees in a little micro-roaster - special coffees for people who really enjoy very fine coffees.
(Lynn) We’re a small business in Massachusetts, although we live about 25 miles away in southern NH. Right now there are three of us in the business. At different times there have been as many as 5 or 6 people. However, that still makes you a really small business.
We’ve had health care issues obtaining medical health care coverage for us for many, many years. In the past when we’ve had health care coverage, our premium would be at a certain number and every year – usually in the spring time – there would be an increase of $100 to a $125 a month. Well, after two or three years with a particular company, we would receive a letter that would indicate that their health care premium would be doubling. So what used to cost you five, six or seven hundred dollars per month would now become almost $1500 per month.
As a result of that, particular insurance companies would be squeezing those small businesses out of their programs and out of participation. So for the last four years of our lives, we’ve gone without medical care. I’ve always felt very badly about this, particularly for my husband who has degenerative arthritis in his hips and his knees that is quite, quite severe.
We’ve tried to find a new health care plan. At different points in time, I’ve exhausted the internet. I’ve exhausted insurance agents. I’ve exhausted going through small business organizations to try to find affordable health care.
We were finally able to hook up with a small business organization – essentially, a small business insurance pool - and get health care coverage, but just for my husband. I only have it for him because that alone costs us $532 a month. It would be doubled for me. We have an employee and if our employee hadn’t already been covered by his wife’s coverage through her job, then we would be paying at least 50% of that coverage as well.
So that’s our current situation. I’m glad that we pursued the health care coverage for my husband. The reason we finally overlooked the high cost was because I was concerned that he had something on his shoulder that was not healing. We felt that it was a cancerous situation. As of May 2007, we had his health care coverage and were able to have him go to a doctor for a biopsy. Sure enough, he’s had the bump removed and it was basal cell cancer. Luckily, that’s a slow-growing cancer, but I thought, “Gee, if this had been something more serious, and life-threatening, then somebody could have died while they were waiting to buy into a program for health insurance.”
Ineligible.
(Lynn) The cost was not the only preventative factor in finding health care coverage. Because our business is in Massachusetts and we live in New Hampshire, we were also denied coverage from certain Massachusetts insurance companies that did not want to cover us because our primary residence is in New Hampshire. We live only 25 miles away, and we’re penalized because of it. It didn’t matter how much they cost, we were just ineligible. Or we’d hear that we are too small of a business. Sometimes if you’re a small business and you’re under ten people or under seven people, you’re ineligible to even buy into certain health insurance programs.
The limits of personal responsibility.
(Barry) We stay active, playing tennis and helping run the local tournaments. We try to eat right. We started juicing about 4 years ago and we’ve juiced fresh fruit every single day for the past four years. Fresh pineapples and peaches, apples, pears and grapes - we put them all together in a juicer and we have our juice every single morning. I think that’s helped us keep healthy with fewer colds and other things, but I’m still concerned that my wife doesn’t have health care coverage.
(Lynn) Although I’m very active and feel good, I know that there are many silent diseases out there that affect people like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. You don’t necessarily know or feel the effects of any of those things or other diseases that might be lurking. Without the use of a blood test or other testing devices, you just don’t even know if you’re at risk or have something.
(Barry) You need at least a yearly physical. You have to have a physical every year just to keep yourself safe. Without insurance, you can’t even do the basic things to find out what you have or don’t have.
What do the Goldmans want?
(Barry) I want to see all of us to have health care insurance equal to what federal employees have in Congress. They have excellent plans and we don’t have anything near that available to us, at nearly the price. They pay less and they get more. We don’t get the chance to get the same plan that they have. I think that’s not fair. I really want to see candidates come up with a quality health care plan that will be equal to what government workers receive so everyone will be able to have insurance.
We will not support a candidate who doesn’t have a national health care plan.