Virginians have heard the big numbers – 100,000 people now priced out of the market for health insurance because Congress voted to stop providing premium subsidies.300,000 may lose their Medicaid next year, and 13 hospitals are at risk of closing.
But a group of people hoping to save our healthcare system are now touring the state – calling on Congress to change course. Members and candidates for Congress, doctors and public health experts are part of what’s called the Sick of It Tour.
In Charlottesville, Dr. Mo Nadkarni – co-founder of the city’s free clinic – joined the cause, recalling that during the years when Bill Clinton was president, he figured national healthcare would soon make free clinics unnecessary.
"We thought we’d be in business for six months – two years at most," he says. Here we are 34 years later still providing care to patients without insurance."
He knows the big numbers but wanted to share the small stories like that of a 21-year-old athlete.
"He had asthma which requires albuterol, which is an inhaled medication for asthma. They lost their Medicaid. He lost his albuterol medication. He had a respiratory arrest on a basketball court, and actually it was very difficult to take care of him. I really was taking care of his mother who had to make the awful decision of withdrawing him from mechanical ventilation because he had become brain dead."
Also speaking out, patient Christina Rivera who was shocked when federal subsidies for health insurance were canceled.
"Last year I paid $235 a month for health insurance premium. This year that premium jumped to $1,336 a month and that was even with a higher deductible.
That came out to about $14,000 a year.
"I’m pretty sure most people like us don’t just have $14,000 lying around the house -- $14,000 that they can just say one day. 'You know what, I’d love to give that money to an insurance company so that they can pay their executives billions of dollars I n pay and bonuses."
In any other year, she said, she’d have played healthcare roulette – allowing her coverage to expire.
"You get all your appointments and testing in November," she explains. "Then you fill as many 90-day prescriptions at the very end of December to take you three months into the new year."
But she couldn’t take that risk in 2026, because she knew medical debt would cripple her family.
" We’d lose our farm, our house on our farm, our tractor -- all of it, because I needed life-saving spinal surgery. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to work or drive or even leave my bed."
Tom Perriello is also paying higher premiums. The former congressman and current candidate in Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District says that without coverage, people can’t afford care, and without payments, care providers can’t stay in business.
"We saw three clinics close already. Labor and delivery closed in Farmville and South Boston. We have 11 of the 24 counties in this district no longer have a single OB-GYN operating."
He recently spoke with a woman whose mother suffered a life-threatening heart problem.
"They got her to the hospital in South Boston where the paramedics afterward said that if that hospital were closed, as is predicted, her mom would have died on the way to Richmond. Your zip code should not be a death sentence in this country."
And he fears much bigger problems in January when strict new rules for Medicaid take effect. Rural areas may feel the pain first, but they’ll soon have company.
"They’re coming to Charlottesville and to Lynchburg where we then have longer wait lines. We have a larger number of uncompensated care, and do you think the insurance companies take the loss?No!They pass it on to the rest of us.
And, he says, the lack of access to care threatens families and communities.
"If you have to drive an hour and a half to get your pre-natal care at $4 a gallon of gas, you’re not making that trip. You’re either deciding not to have kids or you’re moving two hours away from your parents and grandparents who are your childcare system -- your support network. You’re seeing the literal death of these communities if people have to move away or choose not to start families."
We had asked the incumbent -- Congressman John McGuire – what he would say to people who had lost their insurance because of his support for federal cuts. He claimed, without any evidence, that there was fraud and abuse in the system.
More recently, Perriello says, he had a different response.
"McGuire had RFK Junior to Danville recently, and they said the quiet part out loud. When asked what they were going to say about this death of our rural healthcare access, they said, ‘Well, we think artificial intelligence will be the answer.’ What they’re saying to our rural communities is you don’t get to talk to a doctor or a nurse. You’re going to get your car from a bot that’s going to be driven by an algorithm that denies you care until things get catastrophic enough that you could die in the rescue squad on the way to Richmond or Charlottesville. That’s their answer for rural health in our communities."
Experts have long argued that by supporting access to care, the United States – which has the most expensive medical services in the world – could actually lower costs.
"We know that when more people have coverage, they get more preventative care, and we actually reduce the overall cost of healthcare," Perriello explains.
It’s not clear how quickly the federal government could reverse course on this situation, but Perriello recalls his first term in office – when the sub-prime mortgage crisis promised grave damage to our economy. Congress, he says, acted almost immediately to stave off that disaster.
