Walk 2024: Day Two

A much sunnier day two of my eighth Walk Across Connecticut in the books. It was a beautiful route today with lots of great conversations.

Here’s how it went:

My old trusty sneakers were soaked from yesterday’s rain, so I started off the morning in Coventry with my backup pair.

I was passing by a CVS when I ran into Denise. She had just learned that her Medicare Advantage plan wouldn’t cover the drug her husband, who is in the hospital, needs to stay alive. One prescription costs $2,000. She’s a retired health care worker so she guesses that she can find a creative way to get the insurer to cover part of it. But she wonders about all the other people who would just accept the denial. They would either drain their savings or be faced with the impossible decision of letting their loved one die.

“The best thing you guys did was cap insulin prices,” she told me. She wants Congress to do that for all drugs. 

I agreed. “Every other country caps drug prices. We should too.”

Denise’s story is a reminder that even if you have insurance, that doesn’t mean you have affordable health care. If we don’t do something about prices and cost, expanding coverage won’t solve much.

Some cynics think my Walk Across Connecticut is scripted. It isn’t. At all. I spoke with Patty today as she was retrieving her trash bins from the curb. She’s a Republican, a DeSantis fan, and wants Connecticut to start locking up more kids who commit crimes like Florida.

I stopped into the amazing clothing bank run by Second Congregational Church in Coventry. Volunteers were hard at work sorting the kids clothes they give away to families in need. So inspiring!

Later on, I walked by Mansfield Drive-In - an institution that’s been around for 70 years! They’re playing Furiosa, Planet of Apes, Garfield, Ghostbusters, and Mean Girls this week. Go catch a showing if you’re in the area!

I also ran into Izzy along my walk and he was nice enough to walk with me for a while this afternoon. You want to know how the economy is rigged against working people? Here’s Izzy’s story. 

He’s 65 years old and worked full time for 17 years at Walmart but never made enough money to save. He lived paycheck to paycheck. But he found honor in the work. He liked helping people. When he got to retirement age, after working full time his whole life, he had virtually nothing saved.

He gets $900 a month from a Social Security check and a little help from food stamps. He pays $700 a month to rent one room in a three-bedroom apartment that he shares with two other guys he barely knows. That leaves him with $200 for the rest of the month for everything else. For a guy who worked hard his whole life, it borders on dehumanizing.

He doesn’t complain, but he gets choked up talking about how this wasn’t how his life was supposed to go. His wife died young, he moved to Eastern Connecticut to start over, and now he’s stuck, after doing what he thought was expected of him.

His story is an example of how this economy is totally rigged against working people. He did everything right. He worked a full-time job at an iconic American company, and they didn’t pay him enough so that he could live with dignity in old age. 

That’s our economy today. All the rules are stacked against guys like Izzy. Wages are too low. Pensions have disappeared. Housing scarcity is a policy choice. Meanwhile trust fund kids live lives of luxury, and many billionaires pay a lower tax rate than Izzy does.

On my walk through downtown Willimantic, I stopped into a pawn shop. Turns out the owner lived in the same haunted house that I did when I first moved when I graduated college. The house inspired the movie, “The Haunting in Connecticut,” but I’ve got nothing but good things to say about my time there! 

Finally I stopped into Willimantic Brewing Company to grab a bite and catch up with some friends. This old post office is now a local institution. Love all the creative things communities do with these amazing historic buildings dotted throughout our state.  

Always grateful for this week, and especially grateful for the sunny weather today. I’ll be back on the road tomorrow for day three!