Ronald Campbell of Baltimore has no private health insurance. (Newsline photo by Mike Santa Rita)

Maryland Newsline
Tuesday, April 12, 2005

He's managed to get by without private health insurance - despite needing medications for diabetes, ulcers, depression and other ailments - with the help of Medicaid and a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization called Medbank.

Campbell, 52,  grew up in East Baltimore and graduated from Northern High School in 1972.

Wearing leg braces until he was about 7 because of cerebral palsy he'd had since birth, Campbell has found life a continual struggle.

“I struggled and struggled to do things better and tried  my best to do things,” he said.

He worked as a machinist for 12 years at Koppers Inc., where he made metal products like piston rings, he said. But in 1994 he lost his job, he said.  

Soon a combination of depression that followed his father’s death, the onset of diabetes and problems with his cerebral palsy forced him to stop working, he said.

“I  found a security guard job, but then I just started to get sicker and sicker, so I had to stop,” he said.

“Sometimes I just couldn’t get around like used to. It hurt a lot. ... My father died, and I started drinking. I fell into depression,” he said. “All the pain I was in, I just couldn’t function no more.

“My legs just started getting worse, and then my arms.

“I could walk, I just couldn’t do it as well as I used to.”

He says he now takes12 medications for diabetes, ulcers, depression and other ailments. They cost about $3,000 a month. With a monthly disability check of $900 as his only income, he asks: “Who can afford that?”

Campbell said his doctor's visits and most of his medications are covered by Medicaid. The medications that Medicaid does not cover are covered by Medbank, a nonprofit funded by state and private donors dedicated to providing medication to the uninsured poor.

Without Medbank’s help, he said, “I’d get sicker.”

--By Mike Santa Rita