After four days, three cities, two stories and one media event, we rolled out of Pennsylvania and into Ohio.

The Keystone State treated us well. Aside from a few technological issues and a laptop meltdown, we fit in time to sample some of the famous chocolate in Hershey, took a refreshing swim in a lake in the Pocono Mountains, and spent a warm evening at a showdown between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the D.C. Nationals. Much out of character for the team – or so we were told – the Pirates actually won.

Thursday morning in Pittsburgh we hooked up with local groups hosting a media event downtown in Mellon Square in honor of both the tour and the nationwide release of a new Families USA report.

The report spotlights the challenges individuals face in trying to buy insurance policies, ranking and detailing the protections each state offers to those who have to go it alone in obtaining health care coverage. Those protections, depressingly, are few and far between.

This is not news to us – we’ve heard from many Pennsylvanians who are struggling to buy insurance on their own:

• Thomas in Swarthmore applied for individual health coverage and was rejected because of his pre-existing condition, arthritis. One insurer told him that he was automatically disqualified for coverage because he was taking more than 4 prescription drugs at the time.

• Barbara of Philadelphia has looked into paying for insurance on her own, but insurers have told her that they won't cover any care to treat her multiple sclerosis for the first 12 months because Pennsylvania law allows insurers to exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions for a full year. But even policies that excluded coverage for her MS have been too expensive for Barbara to afford.

• Sandra of Pottstown, PA told us that she doesn’t qualify for insurance through her job and can’t afford to purchase individual health coverage. Sandra said that if she were to become seriously ill or have an accident requiring hospital care that she could very well lose her home or go bankrupt.

These stories and several more from our partnering organizations were mentioned at the Pittsburgh event to illustrate the need for better protections for people buying insurance on their own.

For more on the event, see the joint press release by the Cover America Tour and local group Consumer Health Coalition.

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