heather payne is one of those people stuck in the gap. as one of my colleagues pointed out, we talked about medicaid expansion, we are talking about the working folk. heather payne is a traveling nurse who is taking care of patients even during covid. and then because she was a traveling nurse, some days she had health care, someday she didn't have health care. she went enough to get conventional medicaid any program she was eligible for cost between $500 in $1000 a month. it was too much. one day she realized something was happening to everybody. she knew something wasn't right. she saved up enough money of her own cash to finally go and see a neurologist. at neurologist said you have actually had a series of mini strokes that require additional care. here she is, she needs additional care, but he does not health care. and so she is literally caught up in the gap between the refusal of the state of georgia to expand medicaid in these onerous work requirements in states like georgia. she is sick, too sick to work, and she is being asked t

when i think about this i often think about heather payne. who is a traveling nurse uh from dublin, georgia. georgia has a health care program if you wanna call it that. that has not enrolled 10,000 people yet. and heather payne is one of those people stuck in the gap as one of my colleagues pointed out very often we talk about medicaid expansion, we're talking about the working poor, people who work every single day. heather payne is a traveling nurse who was taking care of patients even during covid and then. because she was a traveling nurse, some days she had health care sometimes she didn't have health care. she was not poor enough to get conventional medicaid and the programs that she was eligible for would cost between $500 and $1000 a month. it was too much. and so one day she realized that something was happening in her body. she knew something wasn't right. but she didn't have enough money to see what it was and finally she saved up enough money of her own cash to finally go and see a neurologist. and the neurologist said you've act

when i think about this, i often think about a woman that i met while doing my work named heather payne. i think of heather from dalton, georgia, often because here's a woman in the health care coverage gap and guess what she does for a living. she's a traveling nurse. think about that. she's committed her whole life to making sure that other people have the health care coverage that they need. her job is health care. she worked throughout covid as an e.r. and labor and delivery nurse, yet she often did not have health care coverage herself pause she fell into the health care -- because she fell into the health care coverage gap. that's who we're talking about, heather. she made too much to qualify for conventional medicaid but she could not afford coverage on the marketplace. and so about two and a half years ago, heather, who sometimes had health care coverage and sometimes she didn't because she was a traveling nurse, about two and a half years ago, she noticed something was wrong in her body. and even though she noticed something was wrong and she was in pain and discomfort, she cou