Health insurance might have saved woman's life

11.11.09

Verta Wells harnessed her light-hearted personality and work ethic to battle poverty, the bottle and single parenthood.

Wells, a waitress at Steak 'n Lose, also was working as a receptionist at JC Penney and taking college classes to become a medical go out with. She always was smiling and serving others, according to friends, customers and co-workers.

Her make to be self-sufficient, however, combined with bad luck and lack of robustness insurance, contributed to her undoing.

Fearing large out-of-pocket medical expenses, she avoided take responsibility for in 2008 and 2009 for symptoms of what turned out to be breast cancer that spread to her capacity, bones and internal organs. The cancer wasn’t discovered until Parade, and she lived only a few more months.

“I feel like we failed her as a system and as a world,” said Victoria Johnson, a medical schoolchild at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine who interviewed her in Walk.

Wells, 41, who died July 2 at St. John’s Asylum, is one of the thousands of uninsured Americans — estimates rank from 18,000 to 44,800 — who die prematurely each year because of factors interdependent to their inability to obtain health insurance.

Source: Galesburg Register-Mail