[Ohio-talk] H.B. 214 testamony

[Barbara Pierce]

I have sent my testimony to Michael Lieterman to forward to the Ohio General Assembly Health Committee. It is easy to do. You just tell your story, but you have to send it to Michael by Monday.  Please do it.

June 21, 2019

 

Dear Chairman Merrin, Vice Chairman Manning, and Ranking Member Boyd:

 

Thank you for this opportunity to provide written testimony in favor of H.B. 214. I am a healthy seventy-four-year-old woman who has been blind all of her life. Thankfully I do not yet take multiple medications. However, my husband is ten years older than I, and he takes a number of medications. Luckily he can still manage the complex schedule of pills every day. But I am aware that at any point I could be faced with the need to supervise the times and amounts of his medications. We live in a retirement community, but residents who do not have a way of reliably managing their medications wind up in short order in assisted living.

 

The local Discount DrugMart does not offer a medication identification system to its customers. If H.B. 214 were law in Ohio, I would not face the problem that is now hanging over my head, and of course my own medical situation could change at any time, leaving me with medications to manage for myself without pharmacy support.

 

In our retirement community many people are dealing with diminished vision and complex regimens of medication. A number have given up and moved to assisted living because they cannot be confident in their ability to keep their medications straight. This move with its accompanying loss of independence and dignity could be avoided if they could just identify their medications and be reminded of dosage amounts and times.

 

Access to the information available to the reading public was supposed to be guaranteed to print disabled by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, but it is a right still denied to most of us. I urge you to vote this bill onto the House floor and we hope on its way to passage.

 

Thank you for considering my point of view.

 

Very truly yours,

Barbara Pierce

Barbara.pierce9366 at gmail.com

198 Kendal Dr.

Oberlin, OH 44074

 

 
Barbara Pierce, President Emerita
National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
Barbara.pierce9366 at gmail.com
440-774-8077
 

The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise expectations for blind people because low expectations create obstacles between blind people and their dreams. You can live the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back.