•  Campaign Videos (December 2011) « Obama for America
  

[Music] Emily Schlichting: The thing about health is that while you have it you don't think about it.  You don't have to.  But when you don't have it any more it becomes the only thing that matters.  Health is like food; you got to have it to live.

TEXT: FACES OF CHANGE: EMILY'S HEALTH CARE STORY

Emily Schlichting: My name is Emily Schlichting, I am 21 years old and I am from Omaha, Nebraska; I'm a senior at the University of Nebraska.

Jeff Schlichting, Emily's Father: When Emily was young throughout elementary, middle school, high school, we could tell that she was intelligent.  We felt that there was a good chance she could go on and do some significant things and we just tried to help let her choose her own road and tried to be there to help her when we could.

Emily Schlichting: I am just somebody who has like a very set schedule and I like always want to have a say in things and control them and plan them and everything needs to go how I picture it.  And I learned that that is not the way life works. [laughs]

I first noticed the symptoms in my freshman year on the Thursday evening of initiation week.  I had a fever of like 105, 106 for about six days straight before it finally broke.

Jeff Schlichting: We were really at a loss.  We didn't know what it was and we didn't know what to do about it.  It was probably the fourth or fifth doctor that we had seen in various different specialties before we really got one that said I think you probably have Behçet's

Emily Schlichting: Behçet's kind of is a constellation of symptoms. It's a very rare and weird disease.

Jeff Schlichting: Some people have it in the brain, skin, internal organs; it can be in a variety of ways.

Emily Schlichting: But the symptoms that I get primarily are rheumatoid arthritis, major ?abcess ulcers.  I can't walk.  I can't go to the bathroom.  There were days that I would have to take [___] to go to class because my joints were so swollen or like I had those like huge bumps on my legs.  Every time I moved they hurt. 

My rheumatologist put me on a steroid called [___] but it had some pretty nasty side effects.  The next one that I took made two-thirds of my hair fall out.  It was really scary.

Jeff Schlichting: It makes you feel powerless.  Parents are supposed to protect their children, and then they're supposed to help their children have a good life and send them into the world with everything they need.  And we aren't able to send her in the world with perfection because she doesn't have perfect health.

Laura Damuth, fellowship advisor: The first year or so here she was at the university.  She was very focused on getting better, having it diagnosed, taking care of that.

Emily Schlichting: In the summer after my freshman year we started a drug called [___].  Once the [___] started working and my body was doing fine on a daily basis I was kind of able to start focusing more.

Laura Damuth: Something suddenly shifted.

[scene from Damuth's office]
Laura Damuth: We were talking about hoping that you will apply for Rhodes.
Emily Schlichting: I want to.  I really do.  I think I just need to figure out what that program of study's going to look like in a way that means that I really want to do versus doing it to do it.

Laura Damuth: She became incredibly involved with student government. 

[scene from student government meeting]
Emily Schlichting: First off the bat we are going to be doing a little bit of a fun thing at Senate.  We're going to be having some pretty interesting debate.

Emily Schlichting: Finally I was getting my body back, I was doing the things that I loved again and like everything was just kind of like falling back into place and I felt like me again and it was just kind of like the moment of whoa like I overcame more than I gave myself credit for.

Laura Damuth voice: It made her grow up and give her perspective on what the rest of her life was going to be like, which most freshmen don't have to deal with.

Emily Schlichting: I'm really lucky that when I got sick I was on my parents' insurance plan 'cause I was so young and my parents have great insurance.

Jeff Schlichting: If we start thinking ahead a little bit, and we think you know she's not always going to be a student and she's not always going to be able to be a student as a dependent on our health insurance.

Emily Schlichting: It wasn't until I started really reading more during the debate about health reform that I started to understand I'm the person they're talking about there.  Like I'm the person with the pre-existing condition; I'm the person under 26 that is going to need that insurance in 2 1/2 years when I graduate.

MARCH 24, 2010 FRONT PAGES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST

Jeff Schlichting:  The Affordable Care Act helps us by giving us peace of mind.

Emily Schlichting: I don't have to worry about having a pre-existing condition and being denied from billions of insurance plans because of that fact, you know something I can't control and never could control.

Laura Damuth voice: If that had not have passed she would be facing a very different life.

Emily Schlichting: I think health care is something that people deserve and I think that it's something that if we are capable, we should try to provide.

For me health reform is the chance to do what I want to do because I want to do it, not because it's the job that's going to give me the best chance of having adequate health care.

So I think that to kind of share what being sick is actually like is kind of just a really unique silver lining in probably one of the worst things that's ever happened to me.

[clip from C-SPAN, Senate Health, Labor & Pensions] Emily Schlichting: "We are one of the first generations that's given access to free lifetime preventative treatment and care that will prevent life-threatening illnesses before they start."

Emily Schlichting: I never thought about health until I got sick, I never thought about health policy until I got better, and now, that's what I want to do.  I'm going to go into a career in health policy fixing inefficiencies so that a dollar of insurance goes farther and we can care for more people.

Laura Damuth voice: What's amazing about Emily is I think she could do anything she sets her mind to

Jeff Schlichting voice: She sees that American can be better than what it is...

Emily Schlichting: Before you make an assumption about who health care reform helps or like what it does, talk to somebody.  Get a face on it before you pass judgment because health is the foundation for a fulfilling life.  It's having that like foundation of wellness that allows you to enjoy the rest of your life.

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Notes: This moving video is first-rate story telling.  The video really puts a human face on the "pre-existing condition" issue.  It proved to be the first of a number of "Faces of Change" health care stories.

Copyright © 2011 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.