When Marsha Bullock was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma last year, the 62-year-old grandmother’s life took up a pattern of doctors appointments and chemo treatments and prayer.
But as warm summer mornings gave way to chilly autumn nights, she grew increasingly worried about a concern even more immediate than her health: staying warm in the winter.
“We heated mainly by a heating stove,” she said.
She and her husband found burning wood to be more affordable than heating with gas or electricity. But her doctor warned her about the risks of inhaling fine particles from the smoke.
“I was kind of concerned how we were going to get through the winter,“ she said.
Their furnace had been broken for years, and they didn’t have spare funds to fix it.
That’s when Bullock got connected with a local nonprofit: Carroll County Caring Hands.
Helping neighbors in need
For people across the country, an unexpected medical expense can result in financial stress and drastic measures — money pulled early from retirement accounts, late payments on bills or even skipped meals.
A group of volunteers started Carroll County Caring Hands a decade ago to make sure their neighbors in need had financial support when faced with a medical emergency.
“We all had friends and family in situations where they just couldn't do it. They had depleted their savings, they had lost their job,” said Deb Senko, a co-founder of the group.
Located in eastern Ohio, the barriers to health care in Carroll County are unique because of its rural location. Commissioners there believe the county is one of the last in the state without a three- or four-lane highway.
“You can get to your doctor in Carrollton,” said Melanie Campbell, another of the organization’s founding members. “The problem is if you are doing any kind of treatment for a specialty of any kind, you're going out of town.”
Akron is about an hour away. The Cleveland Clinic is even further.
So the group started courting local businesses and hosting bake sales to raise money for gas cards to help people afford transportation to and from doctor’s appointments. Now they do even more: paying mortgages and utility bills, installing handicap ramps and lift chairs.
“We built a fence for an autistic child who kept escaping from the backyard,” said Christine Monaco, the nonprofit’s treasurer.
They’ve helped new parents pay for hotel stays to be closer to prematurely born babies. And they installed an air conditioning system for a woman who had trouble breathing after getting COVID.
“We did a lot of fuel tanks in January,” Monaco said. “We paid a lot of electric bills for people who had electric heat and their electric bills were excessive.”
The group helped 85 people last year and about two dozen since January.
A nationwide problem
Nationwide, a lot of people struggle to keep up with health care costs. A recent survey found a third of Americans have to make tradeoffs to afford medical expenses.
“That could be things like borrowing money, cutting back on utilities. It could be prolonging their prescriptions by cutting pills,” said Ellyn Maese, a senior research consultant for Gallup and the director of research for the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America.
She says as the cost of health care continues to rise, along with the prices of everyday essentials like groceries and gas, more and more families are feeling the strain.
People in the lowest income groups and those without insurance are most affected. But Maese says middle-income families are making sacrifices too, postponing decisions like starting a family, buying a home or furthering their education.
“This is going to take massive policy change and probably thinking about this in a different way than just small-term fixes to stop the bleeding,” she said. “But that doesn't mean we should only think at that large policy level. There are families that are hurting right now. So anything that can help those families that are every day having to make these decisions and take one of those trade-offs out of their life — we have to be thinking on that level as well.”
For Marsha Bullock, a working furnace allowed her and her husband, who also fell ill over the winter, to focus on their health.
“It was a miracle this year we made it through,” she said. “It was a blessing beyond.”
