Morgan Jindrich, Advanced Activist Specialist from Consumers Union's Austin, TX office, joined up with the Cover America Tour for part of the California trip. These are her insights on meeting with Patricia and Maria.

It's a particularly cruel irony that Patricia isn't able to take her work home with her.

Every working day she has traveled from school to school in San Mateo County near San Francisco, helping uninsured families get access to health care, but she and her nine-year-old daughter had no health care coverage themselves.

As we visited in the school district's boardroom it was easy to hear the frustration in her voice as she explained how she is caught in the middle of the health care system. As a part-time employee of the county, Patricia receives something called "cash for benefits." That means each month she gets $400 in her paycheck to help her buy into the group insurance plan offered to the county's full-time workers. But, the group plan is more than the allotted cash, and Patricia has to decide between cash in her pocket to care for her child or paying for health care. The choice for her isn't really much of a choice at all - she can't afford to go without the $400 and can't afford to kick in the other $100.

Things are getting a little better – she recently got news that her daughter had qualified for a program to receive health care. In the past, whenever her daughter would get the sniffles Patricia would have an anxiety attack thinking "what if?"

As a single-parent Patricia puts her health care second to that of her daughter. She has put off health care for herself the past two years, opting for her home remedies of vitamins and lots of garlic. "Women's health [checkups] are out of the question," Patricia says.

She's holding out hope that her job will go to full time and she will be able to afford health care.

That same sunny day, just a week or so to go before the kids flooded the halls of a local school we sat down in the cafeteria courtyard with Maria, a part-time bus driver for special needs children.

Maria, a married mother of three, works ten months out of the year driving the bus and two months over the summer preparing the facility for the kids' return.

Maria "breathes easy" because her kids are covered under Healthy Families, a low cost insurance program for children and teens. A payment of $42 per month covers all three kids. She and her husband are partially covered under Access to Care for Everyone (ACE) at $250 per person per year. Maria explained that ACE will cover a visit to the dentist for a toothache, but not the root canal.

The estimated the cost for her family of five to get insurance through her employer would be $1300-$1500 per month. Maria said that would be her entire paycheck.

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