I have been a community producer at BRIC for a few years now, and one of the best parts is being part of a community of creators. Everyone there has something creative that they want to do, and that already is inspiring. It's not often in regular life that you have an idea and people say,
"OK how do we help you do this, we are ready and enthusiastic!" so having this group of people that encourages each others dreams means a lot.
One of the first people I met at BRIC was "Pop" Gaskins. He was wearing a cowboy hat and he looked like a real cowboy to me (I did spend two years in Wyoming so I feel semi-qualified to say this). We talked about horses that first day.
Fast forward four years later, Pop and I have been working on the same shoots (he is camera one and I am camera two). I often forget how to do things on the camera and he is always happy to patiently explain them to me, or fix my camera when someone locked it too tight. Sometimes when the mic stand gets stuck, and a penny doesn't twist it, he will pull out his knife and fix it.
One day Pop seemed kind of tired, and he showed me what he'd been up to all day - trying to find someone who would take his various insurance options for dental work. Apparently medicare cuts out part of the dental when you retire and so now he was trying to get his teeth/mouth fixed with a large copay. He had an appointment scheduled and said the copay would be $1,000 and he didn't have that yet. We assured Pop that there would be some kind of payment plan and he would not have to come up with $1000 the day of the appointment. We were wrong!
The dental place he was assigned (which has 99.9% one-star ratings on Yelp) not only said they wouldn't start without the full copay, they also offered that he could save money but not having anesthesia. For 13 teeth!
This just made me mad. I've dealt with our healthcare system for a while now, and it is tricky when you are relatively young and healthy, so you can imagine when you are a senior how it all works out.
I decided to start a gofundmepage for Pop. www.gofundme.com/popgaskins
