Health care moves into the workplace

When Marshelle Grimes-Billings started work as a smock room attendant at a poultry processing plant in Decatur, Alabama, in 2021, health care was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

At the time, Grimes-Billings weighed 330 pounds, and she carried with her a Ziploc bag full of pills including three medications for high blood pressure, three medications for diabetes, and various medications to manage gout flare-ups. Each trip to her physician — a 45-minute drive from her home in Courtland, Alabama — seemed to result in another prescription and tough decisions. “Do I pay the co-pay, or do I eat?” she recalls.