Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, is a matter of life and death to millions of people. I know because I’m one of them.
Since birth, I’ve had hemophilia, a chronic, hereditary bleeding disorder. My blood is missing a key chemical component needed to clot, known as Clotting Factor VIII for short. Simply put, I bleed longer and easier than most people (although a paper cut won’t kill me, and I hate that misconception with the burning fury of a thousand suns.) Hemophilia is, necessarily, a huge part of my life. Because I’m at increased risk of bleeding and bruising, sports have never been much of an option for me. I have to be hyper-vigilant about bumps and strains and sprains. If I think there’s a problem, I have to medicate.
That’s the fun part.
Hemophilia medication is a lab-produced replacement for Factor VIII. Rather than my body making Factor VIII, I need doses of a synthetic form a couple times a week no matter what, plus extra whenever I’m:
-injured
-might be injured
-going to have surgery
-going to be extra physically active
-going to do anything else at all that might be a problem
Hemophilia medication, which is administered intravenously (through a needle into a vein), costs well over $100,000 a year without insurance. Without insurance, even my very well-off family would struggle to cover my medical needs. Before the Affordable Care Act, most insurers considered hemophilia a pre-existing condition and refused to cover it—I was incredibly lucky my mother’s employer used a health plan that covered hemophilia for employees and their families.
Now that the Affordable Care Act is in danger, so is my health. Lifetime caps could force me out of an insurance plan. Pre-existing conditions could make me uninsurable. Unlike some healthy people, I can’t risk going without insurance like many do after college. I need to stay on my parents’ insurance until I find a job—and the ACA lets me do that until I’m 26.
Repealing the ACA without a replacement is only slightly worse than the half-baked Republican alternatives being presented. One popular conservative idea is “high-risk pools”—segregate the insurance market: healthy or sick? The sick people get one insurance market, with price-gouging premiums they can’t possibly afford for the care they so desperately need, while the healthy people get nice, cheap premiums rather than paying a few extra bucks a month to get healthcare for sick people. Republicans say this is fair, and that everyone should pay according to their need; this is nice on paper (if you’re not very literate), but patently ridiculous and amoral in practice. Surely the Republican brain trust knows this—but that’s the scary part. Either they don’t know this because they’re not up to do the homework inherent to governing, or they do know it and don’t care as long as they can cut spending to afford a tax cut for the top 1%.
Is my life worth a tax cut? Is any life?
That’s the question Congress has to answer, because the ACA’s importance is, as stated above, life-or-death.
Answer wisely, Congress. You only get one chance, and lives like mine depend on it.
