Dear Lawmaker

Dear lawmaker,

The ACA saved my life. On May 17, 2013 - I collapsed on my floor not breathing, that moment changed my life forever. My husband, who served in the US Army for 16 years and who was a trained medic, performed CPR on me. My loving husband pounded on my chest and breathed into my mouth on my living room floor for what seemed like an eternity until the paramedics arrived. The ambulance took me to the hospital and my entire life changed in an instant. I was diagnosed with a terminal medical condition and I lost my job because I could not return to work when my medical leave ended 12 weeks later. My employer's COBRA premium was $1400.00 a month just for my individual coverage and I no longer had a salary to help me pay it. We put my car up for sale, and we sold off many of our processions trying to raise the money to pay my COBRA premiums. My friends posted a Go Fund Me page to try and help me raise enough money to afford my COBRA premiums and medical bills. We maxed out our credit cards and then opened a couple of new ones and maxed those out too. I was in the middle of life saving medical treatments, in the hospital hooked up to an IV and heart monitors, so there was no way I could go without insurance. It was terrifying lying in my hospital bed worrying that if I could not scrape up enough money to pay my COBRA premiums that I would lose my insurance and I would die.

I switched to an ACA plan as soon as they became available couple of months later. My new ACA plan premium cost only $131.00. I went from paying $1400.00 just for my individual COBRA coverage down to $131.00 for my individual ACA coverage. My ACA plan also offered better coverage than my employer's COBRA plan. My ACA plan allowed me to access the type of medical care I needed to save my life. My COBRA plan did not cover home infusion and I had spent weeks in the hospital, all alone. While my husband was working and doing his best to keep our family going, I was spending days and nights alone in my hospital room, away from my family because my COBRA plan did not cover home infusion treatments. Now my ACA plan did cover home infusion treatment and this allowed me to be treated at home with my family around me. I cannot explain how much it meant to me to come home and be with my family again. Being with my family gave me the strength to fight for my life. Without the ACA my medical care would have bankrupted my family. My family would have lost everything trying to pay for COBRA insurance, medical bills and I would have most likely died. My ACA plan saved my life and saved my family. 

I was extremely blessed to have a job that included Long Term Disability Insurance benefits as part of my employment package. It took another year and a half to apply for and receive those Long Term Disability Insurance Benefits from my previous employer. We cashed in my retirement plan and barely scraped by for a year and a half waiting for those Long Term Disability benefits to be finally awarded. It took an additional year beyond that for me to be awarded Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. It took nearly three years from when I collapsed on my living room floor until I received my first disability benefits. If I had not had that ACA plan my medical bills would have bankrupted my family while we waited for my disability insurance to be awarded.  I know I would have died and it would have financially ruined my family as well.

I live with a serious medical condition, which requires ongoing medical treatment including daily IV infusions, and multiple intravenous medications, all of which would be completely unaffordable without health insurance. Without health insurance, it would be impossible to afford my medical care and I cannot treat my condition through Emergency Room visits. There is no way to treat my medical condition by going to the ER, the way some legislators have so callously suggested.

My ACA insurance plan coverage allows me to stay at home, getting the vital medical care I need daily to stay alive while being able to be close to my family. This means so very much to be treated in my own home instead of spending weeks on end in a hospital. If the ACA is repealed, I will be at great risk for losing access to affordable healthcare because I have a pre-existing condition and will be placed in "high risk pools". I live on a fixed income, receiving Long Term Disability Insurance Benefits from my employer, and my medical expenses will only increase. I am one of those people who will need assistance to be able to continue to afford my health care but I don't want to have to become completely dependent on Medicaid. I worked hard all my life, to have a job with the kind of benefits that are helping my stay independent. I receive Long Term Disability Insurance benefits from my employer because I worked hard to have a job which included those benefits. I worked hard all my life and I want to pay for my own health care. I do not want to feel like a burden to my family. I do not want to feel like a burden to society. I am terrified that repealing the ACA will cause me to not be able to afford health insurance. Without access to medical care I will die and my family will be at great risk of bankruptcy in attempting to afford medical care for me. 

I spent my life working hard; I always had a job from high school onward and all through college and graduate school. I often worked two and three jobs while getting, Bachelors degree, my Master's degree and then PhD. After I finished my education, I became an educator, working as a college professor and years later coordinating higher education reform programs for our nation's oldest and most prestigious nonprofit education reform foundation. I worked hard all my life to achieve the American dream, becoming highly educated, and employed in a field that was actively working to change our country for the better. I was a homeowner raising my family. I was a taxpayer involved in my community; volunteering for nonprofits that helped disabled veterans and rescued shelter dogs. I was achieving my American dream, while working and volunteering to help many others realize their own American dreams. And it all came crashing down in an instant as my life changed on May 17, 2013, and had it not been for the ACA I would have died. The ACA made it possible for me to see my children graduate high school and head off to college.

I want to live to see them get married and have their own children. I want to live and have at least part of the life I worked so hard for all those years. I fear without the ACA I will not have a chance to see my own grand children. I fight tooth and nail every day to stay alive and fighting to survive this medical condition should be all I have to fight for right now because that is more than enough to fight for everyday. Without the ACA I fear I will have to fight to try and afford any medical care at all much less what I need to live. It is hard enough to stay strong and fight to stay alive for my family when I have access to good medical care.

I should not have to worry everyday that congress will vote to take away my access to affordable healthcare and my ability to fight to stay alive.

I should not have to worry that my family will be financially ruined just trying to keep me alive. That is not part of the American dream.

Sincerely, a voter and American dreamer,

Do You Feel Lucky?!?

If the former Vice President of the United States has to sell his home to pay for his son's cancer treatments, then what will the rest of us do when facing a serious medical illness? One in three American will get a cancer diagnosis, one in three. Look to your left, then look to your right; which one will get cancer among you? Will you sell you house to afford chemo? Fighting through serious illness takes every bit of of your energy and when you add on the burden of medical costs with the idea that you must sell everything your own and worked hard for all your life so you or your loved one can have a chance to live is unthinkable. Setting up a Go Fund Me page to beg friends and neighbors to help you pay for a medical treatment is humiliating and it has become the norm in families experiencing serious illness. One in three will get a cancer diagnosis, one in five will become disabled and we as a nation have to do better. Biden told the world about his experience with almost selling his home to pay for his son Bo's cancer treatment when speaking on Thursday, January 12, 2017. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/12/vice-president-biden-obama-offered-financial-help-when-his-son-beau-biden-was-ill-with-brain-cancer/?utm_term=.d38fd8662bec)
Make No Mistake: if the protections of the ACA that prevent insurance companies from denying you coverage due to pre-existing conditions, deny coverage because of a Life Time Cap, or mandate that every policy must include the same fundamental coverage. Medical costs will skyrocket. Premiums will rise unlike anything we saw during Obamacare and 20 million people will not be able to afford any health insurance. They will go back to ignoring symptoms, not seeking treatment for minor medical conditions that are preventible and they will get sicker and sicker. Those minor illnesses will become major illnesses and when they finally go into the hospital with diseases in the most expensive end stages it will cost the taxpayers billions. There are huge costs to repealing the ACA.

The ACA is not perfect but it is working for 20 million people who now have health insurance and of those 20 million 93% are very satisfied with their medical care. When a patient comes in with an infection we work to fix their condition, giving them antibiotics. What the GOP is proposing is like walking through the hospital and shooting every patient in head. Now this analogy is harsh but it is exactly what congress is doing when they talk about "gutting" the ACA. Their "gutting" the ACA will also put the gun to the heads of 20 million people who will lose their health insurance. Why not work to fix the problems, keep what is good and fix the rest? Why "gut" a law and start over? When Social Security was first introduced it only covered widows and orphans. In fact we as a nation created Social Security because we got tired of seeing widows and orphans begging on every street corner, and dying in poverty. We as a nation decided we could no longer look away and let innocent people suffer because of the death of their family's provider. After Social Security was formed we quickly noticed problems and we as a nation worked to fix them. After several amendments and changes we now have a Social Security program that successfully covers most of our citizens. We as a nation worked to make the changes to make the program into what it is today and today it does indeed work successfully for most of our citizens. Once people figured out that Social Security actually provided much needed support for their families they fought to keep it. So if we can work to fix the problems we had with Social Security and change it over time into one of our most important social programs, then why can't our congress work to make the same kind of meaningful changes to the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare? If our Congress is really all about providing affordable healthcare to all of our citizens then why 'gut' the most successful healthcare reform legislation in our nation's history? Why not fix the problems and strengthen what is working? Why not keep the 20 million who now have healthcare on their health care insurance and try to add more? Why would we 'gut' the law and start over from the beginning which would throw millions off of their insurance and drop millions more from Medicaid? WHY?
Because it has never been about providing affordable health care for you and your family.

Protests Against ACA repeal, January 2017 in Ohio.

The GOP keeps saying that Obamacare/ACA will collapse and that health insurance companies are not making any money. But the claim that corporations are losing money on Obamacare ignores the record-breaking profits and compensation packages that health insurers continue to collect.

"Consider UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer that is leaving the marketplace next year. UnitedHealth claims that Obamacare has reduced its 2016 earnings by $850 million. While they might have $850 million less than they wanted, UntedHealth’s profits are still soaring. In fact, UnitedHealth announced record-breaking profits in 2015, followed by an even better year this year. In July 2016, UnitedHealth celebrated revenues that quarter totalling $46.5 billion, an increase of $10 billion since the same time last year. And company filings show that UnitedHealth’s CEO Stephen J. Hemsley made over $20 million in 2015. To be fair, that is a pay cut. The previous year, in 2014, Hemsley took home $66 million in compensation." (“Health insurance industry rakes in billions while blaming Obamacare for losses” by Amy Martyn, Consumer Affairs Magazine,11/01/2016.)
The GOP plan is to remove all restrictions and let the free market sort itself out. But the Free Market is not about providing affordable health care, the Health Insurance Companies are for profit and they will always value profit over human life. They proved that for decades before the ACA and immediately after the ACA is appealed they will launch into getting more profit. The free market will be great for wealthy families which 99% of you are NOT.  

You will have your own health care premiums rise.

You will know some one who loses their insurance. 

You will know someone who will die because of this new GOP healthcare bill.

Protests against repealing the ACA in Virginia, February 2017

Make no mistake the new GOP healthcare reform bill will cost millions of people access to health care. AARP came out strongly against the new healthcare bill on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. The American Academy of Actuaries have published a lengthy response to how the GOP's new American Heath Care Act will cause premiums to raise a by more than 30% in the first year alone and will see that 32 million people will not be able to afford any kind of health care insurance. The actuaries, the people trained to figure out what this plan will cost have stated this plan will cost far more than any ACA plan ever did while dumping 32 million people off their health care plans.  The American Medical Association (AMA) has also denounced the new GOP Health care act will cause serious and permanent damage to our national health. The AMA brought up how the new health care act will defund the Center's of Disease Control's (CDC) annual budget leaving our nation particularly vulnerable to new and dangerous outbreaks of disease. In the last couple of days, other major physician groups,including the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association, have said they have serious issues with or outright oppose the plan.The Academy’s Health Practice Council (HPC) recently released a detailed report of how much damage this new GOP American Health Care Act, 2017 will damage our nationl health care system by sending smaller regional hospitals into financial ruin. 

What is so troubling about the new American Health Care Act of 2017 is how they have shifted the federal money away from those poorer people who needed help to afford to buy health insurance and now giving that money to people who can already completely afford to buy their own insurance. So this new bill gives a refundable tax credit based on age instead of income. That means people who are millionaires and billionaires will get the same tax refund credit that a low income person will get. This is crazy and it is a total waste of your tax payer dollars. For all those people who were pissed off that some low income person got a subsidy to pay for their healthcare insurance because they somehow did not deserve it - how pissed are you going to be that Bill Gates is going to get a tax credit. Millionaire's and Billionaire's do not need any more help from our government. This is just insane.  

Kicking low income people off Medicaid and making it impossible to them to afford buying any type of health insurance WILL COST ALL TAX PAYERS BILLIONS. Removing people from healthcare will only make the problem worse, because people will still get sick, people will still develop diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, people will continue to be injured and all of those medical care costs will be exponentially more expensive when they do not have health insurance coverage. Their medical bills will cause an endless string of bankruptcies resulting in families losing their homes and their jobs and ending up on the rolls of social programs. The loss of their homes will lower property values in their neighborhoods. Their unpaid medical bills will have to be written off by hospitals and will negatively effect the very fragile budgets of smaller regional hospitals; resulting in the closure of thousands of hospitals across the country. When those smaller hospitals close all of the medical staff will loose their jobs; resulting millions of doctors, nurses, medical techs and other staff will lose their jobs.  And all the while people will still being getting sick, still be diagnosed with diseases and still becoming injured. Those people who have lost their health insurance will still come to work with they develop a cold because they can't afford to see a doctor, and their untreated cold and/or flu will be spread through out their offices resulting in major hits to productivity in every company where this occurs. One sick person coming into the office without being treated can spread their illness to half the workplace. Untreated patients spread their germs at the office, when they are getting lunch, as they pick up their children form school, when they go grocery shopping and those germs mutate into stronger strains of the disease causing more people to need treatment. All of those people who develop more serious chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer all of these diseases progress without preventive testament into extremely expensive conditions and as thousands of hospitals close, beds to treat these serious conditions become less and less. There are very serious diseases which are now under control in the general public because people who have them are receiving medical treatment. Hospitalizations and deaths from HIV and Hepatitis are at a twenty year low because of people having affordable access to healthcare. As patients with these diseases are removed from Medicaid and or can no longer afford health insurance their under control conditions will rapidly grow out of control. There is a disturbing and deeply misinformed idea among GOP supporters that people with these type of diseases will just die off and we will be better off without them around. This could not be farther form the truth. Remember back to the levels of contagion from the early 1980's and how fast and how deadly these conditions were when we did not have successful treatments for HIV.  There is no difference in what happens when you don't treat an epidemic because you don't have the medications and not treating the epidemic because you can't afford the medications - the outcomes are the same patients viral loads will become higher and they will be come more contagious and the levels of contagion will effect the greater public. We have forgotten the levels of public fear that surrounded these diseases when we did not have effective medical treatments, and without affordable healthcare for these patients these serious and deadly contagious diseases will start infecting the greater public. Removing affordable access to healthcare for more than 32 million people will cost tax payers billions, it will negatively effect our nation's productivity and our national economy. The new GOP American Health Care Act will cost us all and because this bill irresponsibly gives tax credits to the wealthy and removes taxes on the most wealthy; this bill will successful transfer 600 billion in wealth from middle and low income family to the wealthiest families.  
It is time we as a nation stop rationalizing that access to medical care is only for those who are lucky enough to afford it. And it is luck. Because no matter of hard work will protect you if you are diagnosed with cancer and have to take time off from work to get chemo and radiation. Medical care for serious conditions is the number one cause of bankruptcy in our country. The number one cause of bankruptcy in our country is from medical bills. So no amount of education, or years of experience, or skill at your job will keep you and your family from going bankrupt from medical bills if you get a serious diagnosis. The only thing standing between you and your family going bankrupt because of medical bills is LUCK. For too many decades we have listened to the hateful divisive rhetoric of the GOP that has convinced a large portion of our population that poor people are poor because they are lazy, and that poor people do not deserve to have access to medical care. We have been convinced that we as a nation should let our lower income citizens rot and die on street corners. It only takes one diagnosis, one accident, one unlucky medical crisis and your family will lose everything. And once you lose everything according to the GOP rhetoric you no longer deserve healthcare. If our own Vice President almost has to seek his home in order to pay for his son'd cancer treatment then what hope do the rest of us have? If six months of treating cancer costs you your home, your job, and your savings just to survive, then what do you do when you do survive? How do you recovery from your recovery? 

Protests against repealing the ACA and cutting Medicaid/Medicare at Congressional Patrick Meehan's District Office, March 2017.

The Affordable Care Act/Obamacare is by no means perfect but it has moved our country to a much needed change in how we approach healthcare for our entire population. By providing preventative medical care for all our citizens over time will eventually result in lower medical costs for all because patients will less likely to develop more expensive medical conditions and will need far less ongoing medical care. Contrary to the statements made by GOP leaders, that the ACA is a disaster or is dying or is self destructing - the ACA is more popular than ever and we have more Americans enrolled in health insurance coverage than ever before. Contrary to the lies that the GOP leadership spread about how everyone on ACA plans would see a huge premium hike - in reality only 3% of those covered on ACA plans actually experienced that rate hike, the rest did not notice a premium hike because it was offset by their subsidy. As of January 15, 2017 the American Medical Association reported that 93% of people who are covered by an ACA/Obamacare health insurance are very satisfied with their health care coverage and do not want it to be taken away. Another thing to realize is that the majority of people who will be negatively effected by a repeal of the ACA/Obamacare are those who make less than 200K a year, and are self employed. Think about that for a moment, do you make less than 200K a year and are you self employed or work for a company which does not provide health issuance and are forced to buy your own health insurance? If you are you, better pray you and every member of your family is real lucky and real lucky for the rest of their lives.
You gotta ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky? Well do ya?