For my own mental health and peace of mind, I largely tune out the rhetoric that comes from Trump rallies now — we all have heard countless times his baseless diatribes about witch hunts, election stealing, and the deep state, as well as his obsessive desire to model himself after the world’s most oppressive dictators and normalize tyranny. As the saying goes: Garbage in, garbage out. And, my brain is already stuffed with too much to tackle this.
However, there are occasional moments when my ears perk up at some line he spouts while his followers cheer — never really thinking about the impact of what he is espousing. One of those moments came recently when he returned to his tired old promise of repealing the Affordable Care Act — one of many promises made and promises broken during his first term in office.
Realistically, I believe that the Affordable Care Act is too deeply incorporated into our society now — insuring more than 40 million people and changing the landscape of healthcare accessibility — for it to be repealed without a gigantic fight. However, this does not stop all of the alarm bells ringing in my own head when I hear irresponsible, and frankly morally bankrupt, statements like this from Trump.
I am one of the 40 million Americans who benefit from the Affordable Care Act. Prior to passage of the ACA, I was largely uninsurable because of a pre-existing condition, lupus. My final year before ACA passage, my insurance premiums totaled $2500 per month and my out-of-pocket maximum was more than $30,000. Some months, I had to make really tough decisions at the grocery store so that I could make my premium payments. And this also meant that my care was frequently delayed and I often went without costly medications that could have halted disease progression.
If I was virtually uninsurable before, I know that now — in palliative care for a very rare autoimmune disease, relapsing polychondritis, that targets all of the body’s cartilage-rich structures, including the eyes, trachea, heart, and lungs — that I am completely uninsurable without ACA protections. No insurance company would touch me with a 10-foot pole or even a 100-foot pole. Repeal would be a literal death sentence for me, and millions of other Americans.
This is not to say that our current healthcare system and insurance companies are perfect. Sadly, they are imperfect and flawed. I have learned that the hard way over this last year as I have been forced to crowdfund, via GoFundMe, to pay for medical bills for cutting-edge, last ditch treatment efforts — bills that would have otherwise bankrupted me. It is unconscionable to me that people are reduced to this in an advanced industrialized country, and I know that I am not alone in these struggles. Sadly, people’s needs — and their very lives — repeatedly take a backseat to corporate greed in the healthcare system.
There are miles that we, as a country, can go in improving healthcare accessibility and affordability, particularly for our most vulnerable citizens, many of whom live in healthcare deserts. But, these strides — including the fundamental recognition that healthcare is a right and not a privilege — will only be taken with a blue U.S. Congress and President Biden returned to the White House for a second term.
-Bree J. Schuette
