One million Ohio stories: Keep the Care in the Affordable Care Act

As Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio considers repealing the Accountable Care Act, I hope he keeps two Ohioans in mind.   Natoma Canfield is a middle-aged cancer survivor, a cleaning lady from Medina, Ohio.  Starla Darling is a young mother working in northern Ohio.  She had induced her labor early, just before her employer went bankrupt.

Both these women rely on a strong safety net.  

About one million Ohioans would lose health coverage under the bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which is substantially similar to the Senate bill now in process.  About 700,000 would lose Medicaid and an estimated 293,000 would lose their coverage through the private health-care exchanges, the office of Ohio’s Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown said.  Republican Senate Rob Portman indicated in May that he doesn’t support the House bill because it doesn’t do enough to protect Ohio’s Medicaid expansion population, especially those being treated for opioid abuse.  The Senate bill is now being prettied up with lipstick to attract fence-sitting Republican senators.  

Advice: Share this with your friends in Ohio, urging them to call Sen. Portman’s office at 202-224-3353  with these stories and yours, to ensure he stands firm.  Also, you can enter your story on his website.

Thanks for the source article by Jessica Wehrman in the Columbus Dispatch of May 25, 2017, which quantified the harm to Ohioans.

Arizonans’ stories and the Affordable Care Act

Arizona has been dangerously hot lately.  Speaking of hot air dangerously out of control, the Affordable Care Act is in the middle of a firestorm.

These Arizonans all depend on the Affordable Care Act in some way:

Phoenix residents Bryan and Jenny Masche were blessed with sextuplets.  They’ll need to be able to rely on Medicaid.  

Jeff Jeans, a small businessman in Sedona, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his vocal cords, and now says the ACA saved his life. 

The El Rio Community Health Center in Tucson serves Medicare patients with diabetes like Maria, and many Medicaid patients.  Deep cuts in the Affordable Care Act could greatly reduce the capabilities of Federally Qualified Health Centers like El Rio.

In Wickenburg, Dirk Almstedt and several members of his family struggle with chronic Lyme disease.  Their burdensome care has made him cut way back on his work hours, so they need to be sure Medicaid will be there to cover them. 

Advice:  Ask your Arizonan friends to call Sen. John McCain at (202) 224-2235 and Sen. Jeff Flake at 202-224-4521 to protect the ACA.

Affordable Care Act: A new lease on life

A distressed mom’s story:
     Our son was born with a serious congenital heart defect but is healthy and living a productive life, thanks to two open-heart surgeries, one at age six and the second at age 42. He suffered a heart attack at age 20 and a stroke at age 30, both requiring hospitalization, tests, and medication, but has recovered.

     Currently, he is a successful free-lance videographer in Massachusetts, working for a number of production companies, but has no organization through which he can buy medical insurance.  The MA Affordable Care Act made possible for him to purchase medical insurance as an individual with a pre-existing condition.  This insurance covered his second surgery which gave him a new lease on life.  His insurance cost before the Affordable Care Act in Massachusetts was well over $1,000 a month, after RomneyCare fell to $800 a month and after ObamaCare fell to $700 a month – still a significant expense.  But it has been a huge relief to know that the insurance is there in the event of another medical emergency.  The Affordable Care Act works!

     Repealing the parts of ObamaCare that cover costs of this program will totally destroy it, leaving people like my son at the mercy of greedy insurance companies.  His insurance costs are certainly going to go higher than $1,000 per month as soon as the Affordable Care Act is repealed by the Republicans.  

     What will replace ObamaCare for the 20,000,000 who, like my son, are trying to survive?
Are the Republicans so power hungry that they cannot see what they are doing?

The storyteller is a member of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a group of the congregations of 42 churches, synagogues and mosques.  GBIO was a leader in the coalition that brought universal health insurance to Massachusetts, as the model for ObamaCare.

Read about the effects of universal health insurance in Massachusetts.

The Affordable Care Act: I clinically died twice

Guadalupe Mota told his story at a meeting of nearly 900 members of 32 of the churches, mosques, and synagogues in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization on Feb. 2.  

     I am here because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) saved my life.  I was born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico. When I was learning to walk as a child, like many kids, I would fall and bump my head. But in my case, when that happened, I’d start to bleed uncontrollably.  My parents took me to the doctor, and I was diagnosed hemophilia.  Hemophilia is a hereditary disorder that prevents a person’s blood from clotting. That means both internal and external bleeding can easily become life threatening.

     At age 13, I had a severe internal bleeding that put me in the hospital.  The doctors could not control the bleeding because the medicines they needed had run out. Mexico’s healthcare system was, and still is, too poor and broken to afford the medicines patients like me needed. During that stay in the hospital, I bled so severely that I clinically died twice. Miraculously, I was brought back to life. It is a miracle I am alive today. In many countries like Mexico, hemophiliacs die in their childhood or teenage years because there is no medicine available.

     My parents decided they couldn’t allow this to happen again. Holding dual citizenship in the United States, they decided to move our family to California. They left behind their jobs, our home, and many of our family so I could have access to the medicines I needed. Once in the United States, I received insurance through the state, then through MIT, when I came here for college. After that, I was covered by my employers. As a working adult, my pre-existing condition prevented me from getting coverage for myself.

     Fast forward to January of 2016. I graduated from business school without a job--and without insurance. I once again felt the desperation I had in Mexico. If this had been 2008, my pre-existing condition would have made it impossible to buy insurance. By this time, though,  the ACA was in place. It allowed me to purchase insurance through the Connector at a reasonable price. For the months it took me to find a job, it was my safety net.

     That safety net saved my life. Two months after graduating, I again ended up in a Boston hospital with internal bleeding.  The medicine provided by the hospital stopped my bleeding. But without my insurance, there’s no way I could have afforded those medicines. My condition could have killed me, just as it almost did in Mexico. But it didn’t, because of the Affordable Care Act. I am here because the Affordable Care Act saved my life.

Share this, and your own story, with your U.S. Senators in Alaska, Arizona, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and elsewhere.  Get their name and phone number here.  Read another ACA story. 

I had no idea I had a pre-existing condition: Insurance denials

Jill's question [from January 2008]:
Hi, I was recently laid off from my job last October 2007 and I had insurance with B--- from June 1st until Dec. 1st. I landed a new job right away and started [insurance coverage] with Anthem on Dec. 1st.

All of a sudden I was receiving all of these bills from my doctors stating I owe $6,321 and another $375 for services I was covered on June - August of 2007. B--- states it was a pre-existing condition and they refuse to pay. I had no idea I had a pre existing condition. I have had skin cancer in various areas [where] I have had surgery claiming basil cell, melanoma for the last 2 years. I have never paid anything. B--- is stating since I came aboard to their policy having this "PRE-EXISTING CONDITION" and only being with them for a period of 6 months that they are not obligated to pay. I have never heard of this and had the highest insurance plan under my company, which filed Chapter 11 [bankruptcy proceedings] last fall. I also, when signing up for this insurance plan, never listed anything on paper what I have had done in the past. I just picked the plan so I had no idea I had to be with an insurance provider for a certain length of time or that having skin cancer in different spots of my body was pre-existing. It's not my fault I am in the telecom industry and get laid off all of the time and have to change insurance providers.

If I had known my bills were going to be over $7,000 and I had to stay with B--- for another year and pay more I would have.

Am I really responsible to pay this before Collections is after me?


Jill's conundrum is all too common. Google identifies 3,310,000 stories online with the phrase "I had a pre-existing condition."

Advice: Obamacare would make pre-existing conditions and these sad stories a thing of the past. Tell your Congressman to support it.

Read another pre-existing condition story. The source was the AllExperts website.