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Bill Fair worked at Butler Manufacturing in Galesburg, Illinois for 38 years and took early retirement in 2003. At that time, health insurance for him and his wife, Donna, cost $486 a month. He took a part-time job to make ends meet. But a year after retiring, his health insurance premiums rose to $1,700 a month. The Fairs were forced to drop out of the plan. Their life insurance through Butler was dropped the next year.
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Bill and Donna’s story isn’t much different from the 48 million of other uninsured Americans. But as this all-too-familiar story developed, it showed how appalling the U.S. health care system has become.
The Fair’s son Eric worked at Butler for eight years before he was laid off in 2001. Over the next five years, Eric struggled to maintain a job in a market where many companies were leaving the United States like rats from a burning ship.
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Bill and Donna Fair
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Eric Fair
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The Fair’s son Eric worked at Butler for eight years before he was laid off in 2001. Over the next five years, Eric struggled to maintain a job in a market where many companies were leaving the United States like rats from a burning ship.
In 2006, Eric to make a visit to a Quad Cities hospital complaining of chest pains. According to the Fair’s, the hospital gave him some tests and then sent him home. Complaining of
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more chest pains and a cold, Eric returned to the hospital in early 2007 and was given antibiotics.
On March 17, 2008, Bill Fair made a promise to his 33-year-old son just before he died of heart failure. He told his son that he would try to change things so that no other sons or daughters would die because they can’t get health care. That same day, Donna had a heart attack.
An autopsy later showed Eric’s arteries were 80 to 90 percent blocked by plaque.
In the short time since his retirement, Bill and Donna were mired in $140,000 of debt.
Making $8 an hour and with a $3,000 deductible on his health insurance, Bill realizes that his golden years may be more of a struggle than he had ever dreamed and that he may never recover from this mountain of debt.
With health care costs and premiums spiraling out of control in the United States, it’s no wonder that there were almost 5 million more uninsured workers in 2006 than in 2000.
At a recent news conference in Knox County, the Fairs’ joined Rep. Phil Hare, D-Rock Island to discuss health care. “I believe quality health care is a right, not a privilege,” Hare said. “People are dying because they don’t have affordable access to health care. This is a black eye on our nation.”
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