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Interviews
Todd Jensen
Rancher, Farmer Elmo, Utah
Interviewer
Todd where do you live?
Todd Jensen
I live here in Elmo, Utah.
Interviewer
Elmo, Utah? How long have you lived here?
Todd Jensen
I've been here at this place just about four months now but I've been in Cleveland for 30 years.
Interviewer
And when we were talking last time you said you lived in St. George for a while?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, I lived down there for 14 years working construction.
Interviewer
And then you decided to come back, what made you decide to come back to Cleveland or Elmo?
Todd Jensen
I just liked the small town living pace of life and back to the ranchin'.
Interviewer
As you were living in the St. George area you noticed that the town was just getting bigger?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, it was getting way better. When I moved down there Bluff Street was still trails on the bottom end and all them hayfields were still there, now there ain’t nothing.
Interviewer
So did that kind of distress you?
Todd Jensen
No, it was just time to come home.
Interviewer
Okay so now you're back here in Elmo, explain to me what you do for a living.
Todd Jensen
I ranch fulltime for myself then have a custom farming business and a hay hauling business and then we've got a truck leased onto Savage Industries hauling coal.
Interviewer
So it sounds like to make ends meet you kind of do a little bit of everything as a self employed person?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, you gotta have a variety to cover everything.
Interviewer
And with that, what is your favorite aspect of living here in the country?
Todd Jensen
Probably the pace of life. It's not every cram and jam everywhere you go, you just kind of meander and hurry if you need to and go slow if you need to.
Interviewer
You kind of make your own pace and by being self employed there's a little bit of trade off and I guess one of them might be having health insurance and access to health care. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, for health insurance I'd have to leave the rural community and go like to Salt Lake or St. George or someplace to the big companies to get health benefits.
Interviewer
And with that, what's the advantage of not having to get a job with a company and have those health benefits?
Todd Jensen
One of the advantages is probably just being happier what you do doing this than having to go do something you don't want to be there for.
Interviewer
A lot of times I've heard people say, "Well people that live out in the country they choose to live out there and it's not really a benefit to those in the city". Can you kind of counteract that?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, it is your choice to live here but there's a lot of people that buy little places around here to come get out of the city life on the weekends.
Interviewer
You haul coal so the power plant makes the power. Where does the power go?
Todd Jensen
We ship it all over. Most of it goes to California.
Interviewer
So I guess the question that I'm kind of getting at is that people...although you might appear that if you want health insurance or access to better health care then you need to live in the city but the work that you do down here is a direct benefit to the people.
Todd Jensen
Yeah and there's plans you can get but a lot of them are so costly that you can't justify them.
Interviewer
Have you looked into health insurance and know approximately how much it would cost you a month?
Todd Jensen
It would approximately cost me about 400 to 600 dollars a month.
Todd Jensen
And that's just a single person?
Todd Jensen
Yes
Interviewer
So if you had a family what would it cost you?
Todd Jensen
Probably double.
Interviewer
Does that worry you that you're out there with cows and working with machinery, you could jam your hand in a tractor?
Todd Jensen
Yeah it worries me. It worries everybody. If something happens a hospital bill could put you at bankrupt. The cost of living and hospital bills and if you ain’t working you ain’t producing nothing.
Interviewer
How about the concept that if you are out chasing your cows out in the San Rafael Swell or whatever you're doing, do you ever think about the fact that you're pretty far away from the nearest hospital?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, it would take us about two and a half hours to get to the nearest hospital.
Interviewer
Have you ever had any situation where you were or someone that you were working with or someone that you know that had to deal with that?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, I've had to deal with it and then last year I had an older feller with us running cows and his horse fell on him and knocked him out and it took us three hours to get him off the mountain to even get him to a hospital.
Interviewer
And then with that was it a serious situation?
Todd Jensen
Yeah it was a head trauma. He hit his head on a rock and he's 72 years old.
Interviewer
Talk a little bit to me about...maybe kind of compare and contrast what your life was like when you were living in St. George. When you were in St. George did you work for a construction company where benefits were provided?
Todd Jensen
No, most companies don't have insurance. I worked for that company for nine years and they were looking for insurance but they could never find affordable health insurance.
Interviewer
What do you think about the fact that you're out here and you work really hard and you do a number of things to make ends meet and you keep going on but health insurance is just out of your reach, do you think there should be some sort of government program or what's your take on that?
Todd Jensen
I think there ought to be some way to limit what they charge for health insurance but I don't know if a government program would be the best way to go. Just some way to put a cap on their premiums to where everybody could afford it.
Interviewer
Do you think that somebody's getting rich off of health insurance while people are basically without and suffering?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, your insurance companies are taking in more than they're getting on claims and once you do a claim on them they either cancel you or raise your premium double.
Interviewer
Do you think that there is a fundamental injustice about that?
Todd Jensen
I think there is a little because we're out here working hard and we have a lot of risks in our profession with heavy equipment and the livestock and we just can't all afford it.
Interviewer
Who benefits from you raising cows and hauling coal?
Todd Jensen
Everybody. Without producers you wouldn't have the meat in the grocery stores and the vegetables and without us hauling the coals from the mines you wouldn't have power for some of these plants.
Interviewer
And then I guess the only other question I have is does your family lives around here? Is that something that brought you back here?
Todd Jensen
Yes. I wanted to be back around the family. They all live here in Emery County.
Interviewer
And how many generations do you go back to?
Todd Jensen
There's a lot, my grandma had 120 grandkids and 70 something great-grandkids. We've been here forever.
Interviewer
Do you plan on leaving anytime soon?
Todd Jensen
No, not unless I have to.
Interviewer
So what would be the offer that could make you want to trade in your lifestyle here?
Todd Jensen
Just...the only way I'd do it is if that's the only way I had to survive. I'd stay here for a minimum wage job if that's what it took. I tried the city and there's just no place like home.
Interviewer
If you could talk to the state officials and make them understand the predicament that you're in with health insurance and the need for healthcare especially in a dangerous business like yours. What would you say to the Governor?
Todd Jensen
I would just ask him to find some ways to adjust the premiums to where everybody could afford it and not let the insurance companies get the wealth off of it. It should be a program for us to benefit on medical. That's pretty important.
Interviewer
Do you know who your local representative or State Senator is?
Todd Jensen
I don't. Our closest hospital for specialty is two and a half hours away. We've got to go clear to Salt Lake if we need a specialist.
Interviewer
Let's talk about that a little bit. About the fact that you can get your head trauma care in Price but if you have some sort of ongoing condition or you have a chest pain that you can't identify and you need to go see a Cardiologist...can you talk a little bit about that?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, in 94 I had a serious injury in construction. I was in St. George then but if that would have happened here, I crushed my arm in a track hoe; I would have lost it because it would have taken so long to get to a specialist. That's one of the disadvantages. But we do have a hospital here in Price that's 20 minutes away.
Interviewer
How big of a concern is this for everybody else around here?
Todd Jensen
Well the concern is big for everybody. Everybody is talking about it wherever you go. It's a big deal; they're talking about putting us on an insurance program like Canada. I don't know if that's the way to go, you get people there that's coming to the US for doctors.
Interviewer
How much of this is a concern if you go downtown to the local restaurant or coffee shop or whatever. Do you know people that talk about this issue of non-insurance?
Todd Jensen
Yeah, everybody talk about it with their family. Most of the kids around here do sports so you really need the health insurance.
Interviewer
How about when you did rodeo, were you covered with health insurance then?
Todd Jensen
No, I didn't have it then neither. Luckily my dad had some through the company that he worked for and that picked it up.
