The following article by Rockford Lhotka was posted on the Medium.com website June 26, 2017:
This is an open letter to all compassionate conservatives. Republicans who care about their families, their communities, their states, and their country. But in particular, conservatives who care about other people.
Do you get your health insurance through your employer? Do you think this makes you immune to the ACHA, because “it only affects the poor and unemployed”?
You are wrong. It affects EVERYONE who might get sick or get old.
If you and your loved ones will never get sick or old, then you can stop reading now.
If you are like me, and have health insurance through your employer. And you have good insurance. And your job is as secure as a job can be. Then you might wonder what the ACHA could do that’s bad for you?
First let me ask: is there any chance you or someone you care about will become seriously or chronically ill?
Suppose, like me, you get sick. My problem is my aorta. Other people’s might be cancer, or heart issues, or diabetes (even the kind that doesn’t “come from being lazy”). There are lots of other major and/or chronic health issues people face in their lives.
What’s really amazing about America is that our health care system can treat a lot of these issues very effectively. They literally installed an artificial aorta for me. You and I can both be rightly proud of the quality of health care available in the US.
Now suppose your EMPLOYER SPONSORED health insurance plan has an annual and/or lifetime cap on coverage. Most people never noticed, but nearly these plans all did before Obamacare. None do now, because we’re protected by the ACA. Odds are yours, like mine, had caps prior to Obamacare.
At this point we get to where the ACHA affects you, a gainfully employed conservative getting health insurance through your employer.
The ACHA allows states to get a waiver that allows insurance companies to restore those annual and lifetime caps. The waiver actually eliminates most of the protections from Obamacare, such as ensuring insurance covers anything useful, and treats men and women equally, but right now I’m focused on the thing that’ll affect you — which is the return of the annual and lifetime caps.
It is a safe bet that nearly all Republican states seek that waiver. It was put into the bill because Republicans really want to get “out from under the thumb” of the ACA. They seem to hate these protections against lifetime caps on coverage.
So how much do you think a serious illness or chronic illness costs? Mine has cost my insurance over $750,000 in just three years. One day I’m healthy as an ox, next thing I know I’m being rushed to emergency surgery to fix my aorta before it bursts and kills me.
I ask you to think, how much wealth do you have? Not income, you’ll lose that (at least temporarily) because you are sick. What matters is whether you have several hundred thousand dollars in savings or assets available to cover your healthcare costs.
Statistics show that most Americans only have a few thousand dollars of wealth. But even if you are in your 50’s and have hundreds of thousands saved for retirement, are you willing to give all that to doctors to save your life so you can enjoy retirement without any wealth?
See as soon as you hit that annual cap, YOU pay for the rest of the year — out of pocket. Annual caps were commonly set at $100,000 per year. People who are diagnosed with cancer often go through that in a couple months, so again I ask: how much wealth do you have available?
And as soon as you hit that lifetime cap YOU pay for the rest of YOUR LIFE. No more insurance, ever. When you run out of money you die. Lifetime caps were almost always $1 million. Which seems like a lot until you get cancer, or have a serious heart issue, or an aortic issue like me. Or suppose you develop diabetes in your youth. That costs a lot per year and you’ll almost certainly hit the lifetime cap before you die of natural causes.
In each case, you run out of money, then you go into debt, then you can’t pay your doctors and hospitals, then you die. Broke.
Your family will mourn you. They’ll be sad. And they’ll be destitute — broke. And probably deeply in debt, actually, paying for the health coverage you used while still alive.
Pretty cool huh?
Where you and I are different, is that I live in a (fairly) blue state. So my state won’t invoke the waiver as long we keep the Republicans from gaining control of our government. So people in my state won’t die in poverty, at least not because they become uninsurable.
But you live in a red state. You probably voted for Trump, and your Republican representatives and senators.
But I VERY MUCH doubt that you voted to die penniless when your insurance runs out. You probably figured you were safe because your insurance is through your employer and you’ll never be poor or out of work. Sadly, the Republican waiver is designed to eliminate protections for you and your family.
Sure, you might be ok with Republicans making being poor an even worse living hell than it is. I get that, that’s part of being conservative.
But I can’t IMAGINE that you expected your politicians to put you and your family at such risk? And yet here we are. You are one major/chronic illness away from going broke and then dying in debt.
So what do you do now? CALL YOUR SENATORS and tell them that they shouldn’t do this to you.
We are at a point where the ACHA will pass or fail primarily based on what Republican voters do in red states. The conservatives run the government, and it is in their hands (and thus YOUR hands) as to whether they pass the ACHA and doom the seriously and chronically ill to die as paupers.
This is a test of character. Are you actually a compassionate conservative? Are you going to let this conservative government do this to you? To your countrymen?
View the post here.