DFA, Katy Giebenhain
At this year’s Adams County Heritage Festival on September 21, the DFA Healthcare Task Force invited comments and questions on healthcare to share with Rep. John Joyce. District 13, which Joyce represents, stretches from our county westward and northward.
At our booth we provided pre-cut paper speech bubbles to write comments on. The responses have been collected and assembled on an oversized card which we’re sending to Rep. Joyce’s Adams County District Office.
What do we have to say about healthcare? What are we curious about? What are we panicked about? What changes? What does not? Speech or thought bubbles are graphic containers for voices. We associate them with comics and symbols for messaging apps. Their shape has become an icon. There’s a kiss of art history in a speech bubble. They’ve been around in slightly different forms for centuries. Paintings sometimes included scrolls or banners to quote what figures were saying.
Constituents genuinely want Rep. Joyce to understand how significant their healthcare is. In conversations at the Heritage Festival, I repeatedly heard people wish that he communicated more openly (and frequently) with district residents.
What did people write in their speech bubbles on September 21? Here are a few examples:
“I’m worried about access to childhood vaccines and access to the COVID vaccine.”
“We need Medicaid and Medicare or we will lose rural hospitals and doctors. We all need healthcare!”
“Protect Medicaid and Medicare for all, especially seniors.”
“Can you help make prescription drugs less expensive?”
“Cutting rural hospitals will cost dearly – don’t.”
“Just because the government pays for your healthcare doesn’t mean everyone is so lucky.”
“Why did you vote for a bill that in 2029 alone, when adding the Medicaid and SNAP cuts together will be $5.346 B and will cause the loss of around 50,900 Pennsylvania jobs, and a loss of $477 M to our state’s revenues?”
“Medicaid helps a lot of your constituents! Why did you vote to cut it? Not helpful at all.”
“I’m concerned about the ability of WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital to service the growing aging population in Adams County.”
“Pennie [Pennsylvania’s Health insurance marketplace] has made a great impact in my life.”
“As a physician, how can you justify supporting or voting for the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that will be so disastrous to those on Medicaid?”
I appreciate those who shared their voices. I want to know what’s on the minds of my neighbors when it comes to healthcare. At the booth, what I heard were not only individual patient concerns, but comments about healthcare jobs, available services, political uncertainty, and stress on caregivers (family members or professionals).
The exercise also got me thinking about how we consume news. It shapes our decisions. We are each responsible for the information and sources of information we pay attention to. We are our own gatekeepers.
A few days after the Festival I attended a panel discussion on public pharma in New York. “Fixing a Broken System: The Path to Public Pharma in New York” was presented by NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, T1International and The New School Health and Political Economy Project. It was heartening to hear that medicines should and can be a public good. As taxpayers we already support research and the infrastructure for drug development.
Why do I mention this initiative? The panel included insights from an endocrinologist, two student lawyers, patient advocates, nonprofit staffers and a state assemblywoman sponsoring proposed legislation. It was good to have momentum around a solution. We don’t need to be stuck. There are other ways to do things.
I hope, as Rep. Joyce’s term unfolds, that he will take seriously the lived reality of his constituents. He is responsible for who he pays attention to. He is responsible for how he votes. So are we. Access to medicines and healthcare for all ages matters. It is not abstract. It is not a problem. Healthcare is the common ground we stand on. I expect our representative to actually hear and actually see the people he works for. There is opportunity to listen. Adams County is asking.
Katy Giebenhain is a member of the Gettysburg Area DFA Healthcare Task Force.
