What’s it like for those without insurance?

Reader’s suggestion was inspiration for roundtable discussion.

What’s it like to live without health insurance? Or to pay high health insurance premiums that you really can’t afford?

Those were a couple of questions we posed to a group of area residents who recently volunteered for a roundtable discussion on the plight of those Americans living without health insurance.

My colleague, Ron Rollins, and I sat down with the group recently to discuss their specific health challenges and the frustrations they share with trying to navigate through the modern health-care maze, as well as what they think of “Obamacare.” Their answers — presented today in an abridged version of the conversation — may surprise you.

Regular readers of this page may recall how the idea for this roundtable discussion originated. I received a phone call several weeks ago from a reader who — after reading our roundtable discussions on arming teachers and school staffers — recommended that we convene another roundtable to talk about his personal dilemma: he’s been without health insurance for six years. He thought our readers should know about the struggles of the estimated 50 million Americans currently without health insurance.

We agreed that his suggestion was a good one and sought volunteers from our readership. Today you’ll get to meet a few of those readers. (Unfortunately, the reader who made the suggestion was unable to attend our roundtable.)

Let me know what you think of today’s discussion. You can keep the conversation going by sending email at mwilliams@coxohio.com. And if there’s a subject that you think we should address on this page, feel free to suggest that, too.

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