Don’t forget health care heroes

As a frontline health care provider, I knew I was at increased risk for COVID-19 when I went to work to see sick patients and their families every day, but I never believed that I would be faced with the burden of lost wages and medical bills if I were to become infected myself.

After the pandemic hit our state, I was humbled but proud to be on the receiving end of an endless stream of verbal and written praise, mountains of rhetoric that made it easier to leave my family at home as I drove the 25 miles from our house in Parker to my clinic for underserved families in Green Valley Ranch.

Health care workers have been called the “heroes” of this war, true “warriors” on the front lines; yet, like so many of our country’s actual soldiers that come home from war, I feel these words have proven to be empty.

While many states urgently established emergency executive orders which grant front line health care providers and first responders automatic benefits under their state’s workers compensation laws and others continue to do so, our state has failed to require insurers to approve these common sense claims for at-risk employees.

Unfortunately, after working with no effective PPE for the first weeks of the pandemic due to the nationwide shortage, I am one of the countless health care providers that were infected and became seriously ill. The Colorado General Assembly had the opportunity to show health care providers and other essential workers that we truly are supported by passing Senate Bill 20-216 which would have granted workers’ compensation benefits to those infected by putting the burden of proof on the insurance company and not on the employee. Unfortunately, on June 10, 2020 the bill was “postponed” and our state’s lawmakers proved that actions really do speak louder than words.

Meggan Macias, Parker