Meet the workers: Becky Washington

24-year-old Becky Washington is a victim of the health care crisis gripping the Heartland of America.

Becky’s health is just fine, as far as she knows. It’s her dreams that are a bit under the weather.

“I live with my mother now but I’d really like to get married and get a place of our own,” she says. “We would start with a little apartment and work up to a house with a little bit of land where we could plant flowers and even tend a little vegetable garden.”

But today even this modest plan seems out of reach. Becky’s mother suffers from diabetes and to help pay for her mother’s medicine, Becky must dip into her own savings. The cost of the medication is turning Becky’s ambition into a pipe dream.

In early 2007, both Becky and her mother began working for Mitch Murch Maintenance Management cleaning the Lilly Technology Center owned by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, who—perhaps ironically—markets medicine throughout the world. The cleaning contractor promised benefits, including health coverage, after a probation period of 90 days.

In the meantime, Becky worked 6 hours a day cleaning bathrooms. “Some of those toilets were nasty,” she says. “I had to ask for a mask, which helped a little bit.” She was paid just $8 an hour—much of which went to helping her mother with bills and medicine.

As the 90-day deadline approached, Becky’s mother began to call in sick. “They fired her,” Becky says. “She had headaches, stomach aches and back pain because of the diabetes.” Then Becky herself was fired. “I was pretty upset,” she says. “Then I thought ‘nobody seems to work here more than 90 days. What’s going on?”

Finding a new job has not been easy. “Indianapolis needs better jobs, jobs that pay a decent wage and provide medicine if you get sick,” she says.