Repealing Opportunity
Forget What You Think You Know About Obamacare
In the fall of 2007, I was lucky. Or privileged. Or both. Regardless, I was sick.
23 years old, living in the rite-of-passage group house near Logan Circle in DC and working my first real job, I was spending the weekend violently ill from had-to-be-that-potluck food poisoning. Lemon-lime gatorade, Whole Foods chicken soup from a kind roommate, and a couple days of Planet Earth on the couch and I was feeling like myself again. It was time to celebrate!
Food poisoning doesn’t come back for seconds. This did.
My primary care doctor wouldn’t see me again. The GI specialist was supposed to be my next stop. But before that, Halloween.
While the E.R. filled up with dads who’d cut their hand pumpkin carving, I sat there shuddering with pain and waiting my turn. My intestines were blocked, likely inflamed by Crohn’s Disease. A colonoscopy days later confirmed the diagnosis. Cue the montage:
Three months of doctors, steroids and treatments, sick days, more doctors, 20lbs of weight loss, struggles with work and focus, loneliness, white bread pb&j, isolation, flare ups, and hope on the ropes.
One morning in the early days of January, I awoke feeling worse than my new normal. I stayed home and, presciently, so did my loving new girlfriend. Two hours later, this disease had stabbed me. I had no breath—the pain consumed everything. In a gauzy haze, I held myself up off the seat with both hands on my car’s “oh shit” handle while she drove us to the hospital.
The wheelchair I sat in clattered in time with my pain as I waited to be seen. Triaged, it was clear something was very wrong. An hour later, I was under. My intestines had perforated. Thesaurus: Ruptured. Life threatening. Result: Emergency surgery to remove a section of my small intestine and appendix.
That day changed me. It marked the beginning of remission from this miserable, all-too-common disease. It activated a world of support and love around me that still humbles me today. And it meant, for the rest of my days, I would have a chronic disease. But it did not bankrupt me.
At tens of thousands of dollars, my medical bills were higher than my salary that year. A healthy and ambitious kid, Crohn’s hit me like a piano from the sky. But I had insurance—not because I was savvy, frugal, or smart—but because I had managed to get a great job with health coverage right before the recession hit. I was lucky. It could have played out much differently.
For a generation of post-recession young people, Obamacare has meant protection from the falling pianos. They can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26, they can buy coverage that’s subsidized and high quality, and they can leave the safe harbor of a large full-time employer to try something risky or new—even if they have a pre-existing condition, like me.
If I hadn’t gotten that job, I probably would not have purchased insurance. I might have avoided treatment because of costs. And my life would certainly be a lot different today.
Obamacare is about mitigating risk, avoiding catastrophe, and keeping people healthy in the first place. But more than all that, it’s about opportunity.
Opportunity to start a business despite a preexisting condition.
Opportunity to leave school and volunteer, travel, or support a political campaign.
Opportunity to make ends meet for your family knowing you are protected from financial shock.
Opportunity to get preventive care and detect cancer before it spreads, or manage a complex condition like diabetes.
Opportunity to have kids without worrying about how you’ll pay the bills if your child is born early or has complications.
Opportunity to raise children with bright eyes, knowing that they have a chance to live healthier, longer and more secure life than you.
When we do the final math on Obamacare, let us not forget the value of opportunity: the possibilities that we can all unlock when our focus is up on the horizon, not cast down at trouble and worry.
For our young people, that means insulating them from the risk of illness, injury, and bankruptcy that can derail promising lives before they get started.
For Americans with preexisting conditions, that means protecting their opportunity to start a business, take a leap of faith, and build our economy. The ability to take those risks, without putting your family on the line, is the preexisting condition for a thriving 21st century America.
As Obama said to critics in his final days in office, “If you can in fact put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan.”
“But I want to see it first.”
It’s always easier to tear things down than to build and create. But repealing Obamacare would just as surely repeal the opportunities it gives all Americans. President Trump and Congressional Republicans (like Paul Ryan and Tom Price) owe the American people the answer to a simple question as they dismantle the Affordable Care Act:
How will you protect our opportunity as Americans to achieve greatly? To live a life filled to the brimming top of our potential? To leave this beautiful country better off than when we found it?
We are listening. And we are ready to fight.
