I met Valerie at her office in the Upjohn Building in downtown Kalamazoo. Situated on Henrietta Street, just north of the core of Bronson Hospital’s campus, the building’s design hearkens back to the glory days of medicine in Kalamazoo. Valerie proudly told me that she started working with Terry in March of 2014 and immediately started helping with the Enroll Kalamazoo events. I wanted to begin my conversation with Valerie by getting a sense of why the creation of Enroll Kalamazoo was important. According to Valerie, Bronson as a whole is very involved in reaching out to the community to make sure they have the needed resources. Once Bronson realized that many people of the community were having difficulty signing up and that they were getting misinformation about the new health care law, they decided to hold events to help community members have an opportunity to sign up and provide the resources to help educate people on the new law.

Valerie attended two events Enroll Kalamazoo held for the ACA towards the end of March. Since March 31st was the deadline that people needed to meet to enroll in the ACA, Valerie noticed a level of anxiety and sometimes feelings of frustration coming from the people who were attending these events and were trying to complete the application process. She observed that sometimes a navigator would be with one person for up to two hours; everyone, had different situations and getting the information the navigator needed could take a lot of time. In her opinion, this is why the “one on ones” with a navigator were so important for helping people get signed up for the ACA. The difficulties of the website, www.heathcare.gov, and the complexities of different situations made it extremely hard sometimes to sign up, and by having that one on one time with a navigator made the process much more manageable. Valerie made a point to say that even with the anxiety and frustration some were feeling, there were many people that were very happy and excited because they didn’t realize they would be able to get access to healthcare for such an affordable price. Seeing this interaction between the community members and navigators when people were so excited to be able to get coverage was one of the great highlights for Valerie at those events.

When I turned the conversation to the topic of Healthy Michigan, which is the expansion of Medicaid, I could almost sense Valerie take a deep breath. Compared to the ACA, Valerie stated, “Everything is going a lot more smoothly for the Healthy Michigan plan, which is a relief.” Valerie pointed to the fact that the website for Healthy Michigan is a lot easier than the ACA’s. This is because it is able to the handle the amount of people on it compared to the website for the ACA. The Enroll Kalamazoo events for Healthy Michigan are very similar to those for the ACA, and they are held at the same locations. Valerie spent a good amount of her time in the beginning of April following up with 154 forms from people who attended the ACA events that would need to sign up for Healthy Michigan instead. She stated that people are very excited and grateful for Healthy Michigan. It is crucial to get people signed up for Healthy Michigan for the fact that they will have to pay a fine if they go more than three months without coverage.

According to Valerie, “Everyone needs health insurance, I’ve come across people now that have said they haven’t had health insurance for like ten years.” She was passionate when she spoke about growing up in a family that stressed the importance of having health insurance. Because you never know what may happen down the road. She proceeded to talk about how important Healthy Michigan is to people and pointed to the Healthy Michigan requirement that people go in for annual check ups. When people sign up for Healthy Michigan they have to go see a doctor within the first sixty days; this is key in helping prevent and treat chronic illness.

Valerie recalled story of a woman she was helping at an ACA event. The woman’s husband had passed away and as a result she lost her health insurance. She was trying to find work so an employer could cover her, but that was becoming difficult. As Valerie worked with her throughout the application process they found out she could qualify for Healthy Michigan. The woman was very happy that she would have coverage and would be able to afford it. It is stories like this, Valerie said, that illustrate the large impact the ACA may have on members of this community.

While I was trying to process the emotional story I had just heard about a recent widow’s struggle to acquire health care I started to think about Kalamazoo and all of the people the ACA and Healthy Michigan will affect. I thanked Valerie for our meeting and thanked her for all of the hard work that she was putting in with Enroll Kalamazoo. As I left the Upjohn building and glanced upward towards the skyline I began to see the dichotomy of my hometown. It was a city with a rich history of medicine, philanthropy, innovation and entrepreneurship, but it was also a city where poverty, diversity and health concerns play a role as well. By interviewing community members and leaders we intend to document this moment in Kalamazoo’s history.