CHARLESTON — Monday marks one month since the government was fully open.
Federal employees are now bracing to miss a second paycheck and trying to balance what they can spend money on. West Virginia Health Right is doing its part in making sure any federal employee can get help with prescription medications.
Angie Settle, the CEO of West Virginia Health Right, said this is important to them.
“We realize with the federal employees out of work, they are without income,” she said. “A lot of times, even if they are insured, there are large copays involved, especially with items like insulin. We don’t want people to go without life-sustaining medications during this period and we want them to know they don’t have to go without them. We want them to know that we are here to fill that gap until things return to normal.”
Settle and West Virginia Health Right announced the start of their helping hand on Thursday evening. She said they will try to help any federal employee that walks through the doors that is struggling to pay for certain medication, but understands it will be done on a case-by-case basis.
“We don’t have access to every medication under the sun but with certain drug programs and some that we purchase, we are going to take it case by case,” she said. “We are going to take a look at what they have and if there is any way at all that we can help them with those medications, we are going to make sure they don’t go without.”
Monday marks day 31 of the partial government shutdownover President Donald Trump’s demand for funding of a border wall.
Jeff Davison, a federal employee who is a Drug Counselor in a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, appeared on Friday’s MetroNews ‘Talkline’ and said he does not have a side to this political stalemate, he just wants it to end.
“We do discuss our political views but this goes over that, this transcends that,” he said. “Everything really starts at home and when our families are being impacted we don’t really care who is wins the political advantage.
“I’ll just speak for me, I don’t care who wins the political advantage. I have certain hopes but the bottom line is my family is being impacted negatively and as it goes longer, the impact will be greater. There needs to be another way to fight this battle without using people who have no dog in this fight as far as political aspirations or affiliations that are that high. We are being used as pawns as this and the damage is going to be there regardless of who prevails.”
Davison, the Bedford, Pa. native, focused on the fact that damage has already been done to families by this shutdown.
“When this is all over until somebody blinks, after somebody finally does and they get this settled, that doesn’t help with people who maybe damaged their credit, had to lose a car or something,” he said. “God forbid they lose their house.
“In the meantime the minor stuff that isn’t so minor. You want to do some things with your kids and make these memories, you can’t go back and do that retroactively. There is a cost that has to be paid and that just can’t be made up by making up the backpay.”
Settle said the federal employees struggling like Davison mentioned, fit right into the bill of West Virginia Health Right.
“We are here to fill gaps in care,” she said. “We want to take care of the uninsured and underinsured. These federal employees will definitely be in the situation of underinsured because they are suddenly faced without a paycheck. Any time we think cost is going to be prohibitive for people accessing healthcare, we want to try to fill that need if we can.”
There seems to be no end in sight for the partial government shutdown and Davison just wants the two sides to compromise.
“We have come to think of words such as compromise as bad things and it really isn’t,” he said. “That is what our system is based on is compromising and coming to a meeting of the mind. You get this and we’ll get this.
“Right now they are playing this all or nothing game. If they want to do that and have these meetings and stand on these hard lines, that is on them. But now they have involved many of thousands of people in this game as well. The frustrating part is being the one as a whole is paying the higher price for this and having no input into how it is finally decided. We are just waiting for whoever to blink to do it.”
West Virginia Health Right is located at 1520 Washington Street East in Charleston. They will offer medication help for any federal employee until the end of the government shutdown.
The organization said in a release that anyone affected by the shutdown who needs temporary medication assistance through West Virginia Health Right should call Rhonda Francis, Clinical Coordinator, at 304-414-5922 for information.
“You think about somebody who is on insulin or seizure medication, what can happen if they go without,” Settle said. “A lot of people think if you are insured, everything is covered. But we do know there are tiers, different levels you have to pay for certain medications based on brands, etc. We certainly don’t want anybody out there suffering because of this shutdown.”
By Jake Flatley
