The XX Factor

Health Care Reform’s New Poster Girls

KJ, you asked for health care reform’s poster girls . This week a few have emerged. Our own Sarah Wildman was called to testify on the Hill about her health insurance nightmare during her pregnancy. And Regina Holliday, a Washington neighbor, is featured today in the Washington Post . Her husband died of kidney cancer seven weeks ago on the day the Senate took up health care reform. He couldn’t afford health insurance, so he never got the tests that would have detected the cancer early. She and her two young sons are about to lose their own coverage. Holliday is now painting a 20-foot-high mural of her husband on his deathbed, near a bookstore I pass almost every day.