It was a nightmare come to life. One day a few years ago, La Honda resident Wayne Petersen got sick. His muscles were weak and he felt tired all the time. Sometimes he couldn’t speak or swallow his food. His gait was unsteady and at one point, he fell out of his car because he couldn’t stand. Terrifying as his symptoms were, Petersen didn’t have a health care plan to deal with them. He had been denied medical insurance due to pre-existing conditions. By the time he came to Puente for help, Petersen had already spent his entire life savings on private doctor visits. He was broke, and in spite of their efforts, none of the experts he’d consulted could figure out what was wrong with him. That changed almost as soon as Petersen met with Safety Net Manager Lorena Vargas de Mendez, who discovered he qualified for San Mateo County’s Medicaid Coverage Expansion Program. Within a month Puente helped Petersen access the San Mateo County Health System. He got a primary care physician, who referred him to a series of specialists. He underwent echocardiograms, breathing analysis, liver monitoring, blood cell counts – “everything you can imagine,” he says. Finally, Petersen was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, an autoimmune disease that presents only about 30,000 cases a year in the U.S. … Continue reading Puente’s health care interventions: the difference between living and dying