Doug - Enosburg Falls, VT

“I have contact with lots of farmers. Farmers are lucky if they are like me and have insurance through someone else in the family…during that time I had very few needs for the health insurance but it made a huge difference as far as what we could do as farmers. My experience is regarding building a farm over 40 years…doing it with many different enterprises…my margins were always very small. Health insurance was simply not affordable. I guess I can say I was fortunate to be of the age where I can have Medicaid. I think we would have been ruined in recent years because I had a stroke. Medicare carried most the expenses…I was just lucky once again. I think whatever type of farmer, they're squeezed all the time by the American cheap food policy and system, and we’re all harmed by low quality food. I’ve often said the best way to carry health insurance is to eat really outstanding food. People are subject to terrible degenerative diseases brought on by bad food compounding its effects over many generations. These diseases are starting to express themselves in children and infants that have come from the terrible diet that most Americans have. Health insurance is becoming more and more expensive because more and more of us need a lot of health care. Ultimately, what we need to do is create millions of farms in this country and the education of the people so they are happy to pay much more to support farmers and in a number of generations we'll regain our health and healthcare costs will go down, but everyone needs healthcare. I’m a strong supporter of the need for everyone to have medical access without undue expense.”