H1N1 and One Family's Story of Appreciation for Union-won Benefits

My name is Tanya Cook.  I am a graduate student in the sociology department at UW-Madison, a Wisconsin native, and the mother of three great kids.  I’d like to share my family’s story with you.  I hope it helps illustrate how the Emergency Budget Repair Bill may hurt Wisconsin families by restricting Union bargaining rights.  If this bill passes, it may have the damaging effect of eliminating health insurance and tuition remission benefits for many teaching and project assistants at the UW.  Losing my tuition benefit and/or health insurance is literally taking money away from my kids.  I cannot overstate how much my family has appreciated the insurance benefit.  

In May of 2009 while working as a project assistant and covered by my health insurance benefit through the UW, I had an emergency appendectomy.  Less than three weeks after recovering from this procedure my husband became gravely ill with H1N1.  He experienced lung failure and was put into an induced coma in the ICU for a month so that a ventilator could assist with his breathing.  Thankfully he recovered and was able to return home after a two-month hospital stay.  We are grateful for the excellent care he received, the support of family and friends, and definitely feel blessed by a higher power for his survival.  We are also grateful that we paid very little out of pocket for what totaled over $150,000 in medical expenses.  Without our insurance benefit, if we had had to pay even a portion of this total our family may have had to declare bankruptcy.  When you are a young healthy person it is easy to take your health for granted, but as we learned in 2009, even healthy people can become deathly ill in days.  

I am thinking about all of the people that may suffer if this goes through.  I think this could have the effect of putting more grad students with families on Badger Care and food stamps.  Luckily my husband's income pays for our cost of living but there are many single student parents who do not have the option of being covered by their partner's income/insurance.  These individuals provide valuable services to the state as a whole.  We educate your children while taking care of our own.  We love our jobs, we love working with students, and we want to continue to serve and help others with our work.