On October 16, 2025, the Daily Mining Gazette reported on Michigan United at a healthcare town hall in Hancock, MI. Our own Audrey Gerard, Northern Region Manager, spoke of her own experiences with the healthcare industry. Below a snippet of the complete article, which you can read here.

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State Rep. Carrie Rheingans (D-Ann Arbor) visited the Orpheum Theater in Hancock Wednesday evening to participate in the Healthcare for All Town hall regarding her proposed bill HB 4407, or the MiCare bill. Rheingans came to Hancock by invitation from Michigan United’s Keweenaw Against the Oligarchy, with support of Keweenaw Indivisible, Keweenaw Mututal Aid Collective, Houghton County Democratic Party and Baraga County Democratic Party to share what the bill entails and how a statewide single-payer healthcare system would operate.

Michigan United Northern Regional Manager Audrey Gerard invited Rheingans to the area believing the current health care system is unsustainable.

“We can make Michigan a leader for the rest of the country and address our health care crisis by advocating for support of a single-payer system like MiCare,” Gerard said. Gerard was one of the introducing speakers before Rheingans spoke, and shared her story of medical debt. Gerard did not have medical insurance when she was 21 years old, and had a medical emergency being diagnosed with sepsis. She was unable to get the care she needed at the facility she was at, and was transferred to St. Mary’s in Duluth, Minnesota. She received care, but was given a $100,000 bill when discharged, not including ambulance expenses or ER expenses in Wisconsin.

“For the following months, I spent my days figuring out how to readjust my life and become a millionaire so I could pay off all my debts. After all, I only worked for $11 an hour at a history museum at the time. But I realized I had a choice. I had more agency than I originally thought. My choice was clear,” Gerard said. “I could live in shame that this experience happened to me, or I could use my story to move other people to take action. And for all the months I spent in shambles, I started dreaming up ways I could make my private shame a story of public power. I knew that all of this could have been easily avoided if we didn’t live in a for profit health insurance world, and I started posting on social media platforms about my debt...”