Pamela Cash-Roper, Unemployed Nurse and Lifelong Republican From North Carolina
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
August 28, 2008:

Hello, my friends. My name is Pam, and I'm from Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Wait 'til you hear what's happening to me. You might find my story familiar. Perhaps it's happening to someone you know--a loved one, a neighbor, a co-worker. Maybe it's happening to you.

Once upon a time in my hometown of Pittsboro, my husband Keith and I had a modest house we could afford, cars, money in a 401k plan, health insurance and, most important of all, our health.

We educated ourselves, got good jobs with benefits, worked day and night, raised four happy children, and saved some money. It was the American dream. We did everything we thought you were supposed to do to live it. We really felt America was working for us.

Then eight years ago, our American dream turned into a nightmare. Keith needed open-heart surgery. His increasingly severe condition left him unable to work as a maintenance electrician. He lost his job and with it the family's health insurance. On a nurse's income I couldn't afford to pay for a health plan on my own, so we sacrificed having health insurance. Keith started receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).

Of course, living without health insurance works, as long as you stay healthy. That changed. Five years after Keith's surgery, I had one of my own, a quadruple bypass. Our medical expenses became even more unmanageable. It was increasingly difficult for me to work. We were buried in medical expenses.

Today, Keith and I get by on the $1,164 a month he receives from SSDI. If we paid full price for our prescription drugs, the cost would exceed $3,000. I've had to do some really fancy accounting to make it all work each month. Sometimes that meant taking half doses of my 15 prescriptions or going without medications all together.

I'm a lifelong Republican. I voted for Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush. But I literally cannot afford four more years of this.

Barack Obama gets it: quality, affordable, portable coverage for all. It is the least we citizens of the greatest country in the world should have. And that's why after 36 years of casting my presidential votes as a registered Republican, this year I am supporting Barack Obama to be my president.