admin @ Mon, 2005-10-24 23:46
It's been two months now since thousands of Tennesseans lost TennCare coverage, a move which forces many to go without some medications.
The result can mean severe discomfort for some, but in the case we're bringing you, the family says the result of TennCare's loss proved to be deadly.
For Jane Miller, life with her husband Floyd was everything she dreamed it would be.
"The first years of it was really good. We camped, went fishing, swimming,” Jane tells .
But these days Miller walks alone. She says all that joy was taken away from her when her husband, who over the years continued to struggle with obesity, was robbed of life.
"The last month of his life, I watched him day by day dying because he didn't have his medication to take,” Jane explains as she begins to tear up.
Like thousands of Tennesseans, 45-year-old Floyd Miller received word he was totally cut from TennCare.
He took medication for diabetes, infection, lung disease, high blood pressure, acid reflux, depression --the list goes on.
And with both of them living on disability, buying the 20 plus medicines he needed just wasn't an option.
So he went without and not having that medicine is what miller says caused her husband to die.
The Millers' pharmacist agrees, that taking away the medicine that treated Floyd's chronic problems, no doubt decreased his chance of survival.
"The medicine that Floyd was on, it kept him alive, plain and simple. If they didn't need them they wouldn't have been prescribed," says Steven Teague, from Terry's Pharmacy.
Miller says she's been able to accept that her husband's not coming back because she knows he's finally free of pain.
"Right now he's not hurting, suffering. He's walking down those streets of gold talking with the good man above,” says Jane.
Now she hopes it's through her tears of anger and grief that she sends a strong message to others.
"It's too late for my husband, but I am praying that the Governor, Senators, whoever is in charge that they will change it before anybody else dies,” Jane says.
Jane Miller says she tried several times to get help from the governor and senators.
She now plans on writing them now that her husband has died. She hopes her story will encourage others to do the same.
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