**Our TRAGIC story*** It is hard to believe, but TRAGIC, just celebrated our first anniversary. Some of you know the story behind TRAGIC, but most do not know the full story behind it. So settle down, get comfy, grab a hot chocolate or hot toddy, and get ready for a tragic story that could happen to any of us. It all began when Ashley Cline was sitting at her kitchen table. Her youngest daughter suffers from developmental delays that require physical and occupational therapy. Her therapist shared with her that the SHBP would no longer cover the therapy her daughter required, costing Ashley and her family over $500 a month for these services! Ashley was furious about this. This was not disclosed to them at open enrollment and who would think to even ask. After all, in the past, the state made sure that their employees had good benefits. That is one reason so many state employees will sacrifice working in the private sector. The pay may not be great, but the benefit package somewhat made up for it. Ashley decided she would use social media to voice her outrage. Our group formed mainly from a group of teachers within Cherokee County. While my family has been fortunate to have no major illness (other than an occasional visit to doctors or urgent care), I could picture myself or other family members in needs for these services. At any point, my family could need major medical services. I, along with many others, joined TRAGIC because, quite simply, I was tired of politicians taking advantage of teachers and felt it was time for us to stand up for our profession and for our families. Within three days, we had nearly 500 members and WSB contacted us for a television interview. After the story aired, our numbers grew exponentially, as members contacted other teachers across the state. Soon, we discovered that the SHBP impacted state employees and retirees, as well. By this time, however, TRAGIC’s membership had grown so large that Facebook would not allow us to change our name! Still, we gladly brought in other state employees and retirees knowing that we would be much stronger if we ALL stood together. Within a few weeks, TRAGIC grew from a small page, where all members could post, to literally over 6,000 members. A small team of volunteers was selected and came to be known as the administrative (admin.) team. Keep in mind we were still on winter break and had not yet returned to school! This core group spent many hours supervising all the posts and comments, but it was soon apparent that the page was impossible to control. We had multiple posts appearing on the same subject and everyone’s newsfeed was being taken over by the many posts on the page. The hard decision was made to only let the admins. post threads. Now the admins. were able to read comments and develop the posts;information was not being lost. Members could now search the posts for the topics they were interested in reading. This also helped to develop the idea that TRAGIC was more than a venting page. We were helping state employees navigate though the insurance process, we were organizing people, and we were becoming a grassroots group known across the state. We set up a rally in February that coincided with several school districts’ February break and other districts’ furlough days. We continued to grow – often adding hundreds of new members each day. By late January, the Governor and the DCH had decided to change our health plan to include co-pays due to our members pressures, phone calls, letter writing, press coverage, and rallying. We never asked for the co-pays, we had asked for affordable health care choices. Our rally went on as planned, drawing attention from multiple media sources. Governor Deal did not, however, attend our rally or make any attempt to listen to our concerns. Throughout the spring, we continued to grow our membership. We also had a group of admins.who began to research why teachers and state employees were being hit with such tremendous increases in premiums. We knew our premiums had risen an average of 10% over the previous 5 years, so we knew the argument that our insurance woes in 2014 were the result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was simply not true. Two of our members filed a class action lawsuit against the State of Georgia and the DCH, claiming that Gold and Silver HRA plan members were paying up to $10 million a month more in premiums than those on Bronze coverage for essentially the same coverage. This lawsuit was not filed by TRAGIC, but the case will effect many of us on the SHBP In the summer, a small team, including myself, met with the DCH to explain our concerns with our current health plan. As a result of that meeting and other conversations, we were given the constituent services email contact to give our members as a way to get issues resolved. We had a contingent arrange a meeting with BCBS of Ga to discuss our concerns. We assembled a small team that met with the Advocates for Responsible Care (ARC) and we joined forces with the Specialty Tiers Coalition of Ga. By July, newspapers were contacting us and asking the questions that members of the admin. team were working on uncovering. Our digging had led us to question the certainty of our TRS benefit, as well as, the dysfunction in the DCH. We are continuing to work to bring media attention to our plight. The state is the largest employer and we, as state employees, have no representation down at the Legislature. We are fragmented into different advocacy groups with no one to bring us together to fight for state employees’ benefits. The truth is, we could be one of the strongest advocacy groups at the capitol if we would all stand together – TRAGIC is working on this, and we hope to have a potential solution very soon. ***Ashleys TRAGIC Story*** Many of you may have noticed that our founder, Ashley Cline, has not been posting much on the site since this summer. There is a reason for this; all this time, while Ashley has been fighting for your healthcare choices, she has been fighting her own battle with her insurance over a mysterious debilitating illness that has changed her life. In June of this year, Ashley herself began developing unusual symptoms. Numbness in her limbs and strong stomach discomfort that sent her to the emergency room several times. She began her battle with her insurance company that insured her, alone. You see, Ashley’s family is a lot like many of ours. She works as an administrator of a virtual charter school. Like most of us, her health plan choices were dictated by what the family can afford. She is insured though her work, while her husband and children are insured by the SHBP. They, just like most of us, cannot afford the spousal “surcharge” built into the family plan, so they must split their coverage. Doctors first brushed off Ashley’s symptoms, misdiagnosing her pain as a strained rib. After numerous CT scans and exploratory surgery, doctors were still puzzled over her symptoms and began suspecting she had MS. Numerous tests were ordered and the insurance denied many of them. She fought for each test and was able to win coverage for most of those tests. The tests were inconclusive; however, and her symptoms were getting worse. Ashley and Nate began to research on their own and began to suspect Lyme disease - Ashley had tested positive for Lyme early in her ordeal, but doctors dismissed this test results. After nine months of visiting numerous doctors, hospitals, and ER visits for the severe pain she was experimenting, Ashley finally got to see an infectious disease doctor who diagnosed her with Advanced Lyme Disease. You can read more about Ashleys struggle with Lyme in an article from todays Cherokee Tribune: cherokeetribune/view/full_story/26318187/article-Local-battles-Lyme-disease--insurance-options?instance=home_top_bullets Unfortunately, advanced stages of Lyme disease are very difficult and expensive to treat. Ashley’s insurance will only cover 28 days out of the six months of antibiotics needed to treat her (delivered via PICC line) and will not cover the hyperbaric oxygen treatments that allow the antibiotics to find and fight the anaerobic bacteria which hides deep in tissues where antibiotics are ineffective. Ashley is now debilitated due to the pain caused by this disease and she and her family are now facing a nightmare decision – allow this disease to cripple a young mother of two OR spend tens of thousands of dollars (their family does not have) to fight the disease. TRAGIC does not promote individual fund raising and we normally delete links for fundraising; it would be impossible for our volunteer administrative team to verify each story. However, when we discussed this as a team, the conclusion was unanimous – TRAGIC would not exist without Ashley and our members need to know what she is going though on a daily basis. If you so feel inclined, please feel free to donate to her GoFundMe Page Link. gofundme/ashleyvslyme Ashley Cline has done too much for all of us to ignore her struggle - truth be told, this could be any of us. This is why we, at TRAGIC, will continue to fight for AFFORDABLE healthcare choices. I know Ashley and Nate will see this, so please let them know that they are in your thoughts and prayers.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 16:19:38 +0000
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