She is called the “Purple Bus Lady.”
And Kathie McClure closed out the week, with her purple bus, in West Virginia. She is back on the road, calling on people in more than half a dozen states to get out and vote in the General Election for candidates who support the Affordable Care Act.
She became an activist after she and her husband struggled to maintain their health care coverage because both of their kids had preexisting medical conditions.
McClure’s son has Type I diabetes and her daughter has dealt with epilepsy since being hit in the head during a soccer game when she was 14 years old.
“My husband and I worked together and we were able to keep our kids insured, but it was very expensive rate as a small group. We insured five people and paid more than $3,000 a month to keep everyone with decent coverage,” McClure said.
When her children got older, she says she realized the two would struggle to find health insurance on their own.
“They were uninsurable in the individual insurance market which meant that, if they didn’t have a job providing coverage for them, they were going to have some serious problems,” she said.
She says the Affordable Care Act will help people, like her kids, with preexisting conditions.
“In 2014, if it takes effect, yes, it will solve that problem and I believe that they will be able to buy an individual insurance policy and insurance companies will not be able to charge them more because they’re sick,” she said on Friday’s MetroNews Talkline.
McClure was in Morgantown on Thursday and visited the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department in the Capitol City on Friday.
She is the founder of VoteHealthcare.org and has crossed the country, visiting almost 40 states since 2008, in her purple bus.