By Brittney Lofthouse
We are supposed to be celebrating my dad’s 64th birthday today. But instead, today marks the 8th birthday of his we have celebrated with him in heaven. I know that it has been 8 years since we lost him to cancer, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. I am still waiting for it to get easier. I am still waiting for the day that I don’t reach for the phone to call him when my car starts making a funny noise, or when I have a question about something around the house. Eight years may have passed, but the heartbreak still feels as fresh as it did in April 2013.
My dad died of Liver Cancer just a few short weeks after he was first diagnosed. Despite the short time between diagnosis and his death — he was sick and suffering for months. But because my dad did not have health insurance, doctors dismissed him. He was barely seen or evaluated… by the time a doctor actually found the cancer, it was too late. I believe with every ounce of my being that had my dad has health insurance, he would have at least had a fighting chance of survival.
But health insurance wasn’t affordable for my family. My dad worked his entire life to provide for our family — and I know that I might be a little biased, but I think he did a pretty good job raising me and my two sisters. He was a small business owner — owning half a dozen businesses with countless employees during my lifetime. When I was 10 or 11 he owned the full-service gas station in downtown Sylva that is now innovation — before that a carpet store with a dozen employees that did a ton of commercial work — one job particularly I remember was when he and his staff recarpeted the entirety of the Fontana Village Resort. He always worked. He always had a job— right up until about two weeks before he died from liver cancer — a job he was fired from for missing work because he was in the hospital.
I have struggled with losing my dad for nearly a decade. I am still angry because I truly believe more could have — and should have — been done to save his life. If my dad — a 55-year-old mountain of a man had gotten healthcare when North Carolina was first able to expand Medicaid — he wouldn’t have put off going to the doctor when his knee started to ache. He wouldn’t have worried about how he was going to pay for his yearly physical or checkups.
Closing that healthcare gap would have simply given my dad — and families across North Carolina — the dignity of having access to literal life-saving healthcare.
For the first time in the last decade, I am hopeful that North Carolina families are on the brink of change. As leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly work to pass a budget for the state, Republicans and Democrats are stepping across party lines for the first time and are having conversations about what closing the health insurance coverage gap in North Carolina would look like and how they can work together to make it possible for hundreds of thousands of people. I am optimistic and hopeful to hear about Senator Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore leading the difficult conversations amongst their colleagues surrounding closing the health insurance coverage gap. I am thankful that federal incentives exist to make expansion in North Carolina possible.
The soul-shattering loss of my dad to cancer altered the entire trajectory of my life. But at least for the first time since experiencing that loss — I can find comfort in knowing that hopefully soon my pain will serve a greater purpose by knowing that hard-working families in North Carolina could soon see the state’s health insurance coverage gap finally closed.
Learn more about Brittney’s story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEXUWZuE40U
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