TEXAS – For voters and self-employed workers like Nathalia and Roger Wilson, health care coverage is a main priority. The family has to budget in a nearly $300 inhaler for their asthmatic child Nico every month.
"Whenever you look at it, $270, it's almost like $3,500 a year. Like, it is quite a bit of money for like, a family that might be already on a budget and especially given everything, the landscape right now. A lot of people losing jobs, not having consistent income and having to basically choose if you want to kind of like, feed your family or buy medicine,” Nathalia Wilson said. "Roger is the one that went and he was disgusted when he got home. He was like, ‘Can you believe how much that was?’ And I was like, ‘I don't want to know.’”
Nico is on a higher dosage inhaler of 44 mcg to treat his chronic cough and asthma. But even the lower dosage of medicine would cost the family about a hundred dollars a month.
“We don't get insurance through work. We get insurance, like, private insurance, I think — I don't even know what's called. If he doesn't have it, like, what will happen? What will happen if he doesn't have the medicine for the asthma? And I sure as hell am not gonna sit here and try to find out and keep him without it,” Nathalia Wilson said.
For Nathalia and Roger, health care coverage in the United States has been tricky to maneuver. Nathalia is from Brazil and Roger is from Northern Ireland. When Nathalia gave birth to Nico, it was by C-Section at 36 weeks and he was in the NICU for 10 days. He was diagnosed with hypothyroidism as a baby as well. Nathalia said everything was covered by the U.K. government, making the transition to Texas and a new health care system a vastly different landscape.
“It's even hard, because it is a system that is so different for us. Like, he never had to pay for anything because he's from Ireland. And in Brazil, we had health insurance, but the health insurance is like, ‘Okay you have health insurance, you're covered,’” Nathalia Wilson said. "I’m not saying it’s perfect by any means because it's Brazil — but if you have a problem, you can just go to the hospital and then they will see you there in the hospital with the health insurance. Whenever we were in Ireland – in Britain – it’s like, different because everything is covered by the government, at least in the part that I was in. Again, I'm not sure if that is a model that you'd like to replicate because you do see a lot of people also taking advantage of the system.”
When it comes to health care and the candidates for Texas House District 67, both say they’re focused on health care reforms.
The race pits a four-term incumbent Republican Jeff Leach against Democrat Lorenzo Sanchez, who's hoping to be the first Latino in Collin County elected to the state legislature.
Both were raised in the North Dallas suburb of Plano, but that’s about the only characteristic that unites the pair. Rep. Leach describes himself as a “constitutional conservative,” while Sanchez will be the only openly LGBTQIA+ member of the Texas Legislature if he’s elected.
Rep. Leach states that the lessons learned about the state’s health care system during the pandemic will be his responsibility to turn into reforms.
"Health care and the cost of health care has always been an issue for every American. Certainly the uninsured rate and the cost of health insurance and health care in Texas should alarm all of us. It's not something that we should be nor have we ever been comfortable with,” Leach said. "But we believe in free markets, we believe in competition, we believe in health care freedom. We also believe that the government has a role in providing the right answers and the right policies to take care of people and to lower costs and that's what we're going to work on. That’s what we've been working on, and we’re going to continue to work on."
Sanchez’s campaign site says he believes elected officials are putting politics over their constituents’ well-being.
"We need people to stand up and demand from their representatives. It doesn't matter, let's stop making this into a political issue. Maybe some of the solutions will be politicized. But in all, we should be focused on making sure that every single representative who is serving us is finding those solutions,” Sanchez said. "People need our help. They need people that are going to go down to Austin and find solutions. And that's what I intend to do, especially during this time of pandemic.”
Rep. Leach said the costs surrounding health care should be a concern for everyone, including policymakers. He wants to find a solution that expands coverage to uninsured Texans, safeguards protections for pre-existing conditions and protects the doctor-patient relationship.
"When we look at our health care challenges and we look into the proposed solutions, I simply don't believe that that government should be the end all be all, the one answer, the one solution. Government has a role to help take care of people, but I think that the government's role needs to be fairly limited and smart and strategic. And we need to trust health care professionals working with patients and respect to health care freedom and liberties to reduce costs and make sure health care is affordable and accessible all across the state,” Leach said.
Sanchez is dedicated to expanding Medicaid, stop the price gouging on prescriptions, and provide health care security to all Texans through a single-payer system.
"We want representatives that are going to be focused on finding health care solutions for our community. And I think the most important thing is when we're saying that health care is a human right, that we need to treat it as such. And we need to make sure that everyone has access to affordable health care that can help them, especially during these times of pandemic,” Sanchez said.
For Nathalia and Roger, sometimes getting Nico to use his inhaler is tough enough, they don’t need the cost of his treatment to continue being a battle in itself.