UMD360: Healthcare under Trump

This collection of stories was created by the talented students at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism during the spring semester of 2017 where they created immersive 360 video stories on the first 10 days of the Trump Administration.

Producer: Graham Cullen
Writer: Hannah Yasharoff
Shooter: Connor Hoyt

Debby Alves closes the door of her cab and makes her way to the George Washington hospital — starting and stopping, starting and stopping.

This is one of several doctor’s appointments of the day for Alves, who was diagnosed with acute myopathy five years ago.

Alves, 61, can no longer walk under her own power thanks to the myopathy, using a walker to get around. She can’t stand for more than about seconds. At first, she only used the walker as necessary, but her neurologist begged her to use it on a regular basis.

“Just until I can go a year without a fall,” Alves explains.

Alves has had asthma her whole life. To treat the condition, doctors gave her a variety of steroids. The steroids keep her asthma under control, but at a cost. She has little control of her body’s muscular and nervous systems, causing weakness in her body she previously thought unfathomable. At times, she is in so much pain she can’t lift a spoon to her mouth to eat soup.

Oral steroids ingested in short-term, high doses cause acute myopathy, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Alves now takes roughly 35 medications on a given day to treat the asthma and the myopathy, and double that when she has difficulty breathing.

Despite several weekly appointments — sometimes, as many as three in a day — and the myriad pills she ingests daily, Alves pays just $100 monthly in health insurance.

“If it weren’t for Obamacare, I wouldn’t be alive,” she says.

Alves pays $100 monthly for her medication, but if the American Health Care Act were passed, she estimates that bill would spike to $50,000.

Alves concedes the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, but says any steps made to repeal and replace it should be done with the American people’s health as representatives’ first priority.

“Let’s build a few less B-52s, a few less special tanks that can walk on water,” Alves says. “Let’s cut back on some of the defense, industrial equipment and put that money into taking care of the people of our country because that’s where the real wealth of the country lies.”

Alves has spent a great deal of time advocating for the Affordable Care Act, spending “all of [her] time and physical resources [she] can trying to make sure people of Congress and average Americans know what cost it will have if they end up repealing the Affordable Care Act.”

If the Affordable Care Act were repealed, Alves knows she would face a grave future.

“If they do that, I know about how long, I’m probably going to have,” she says. “I’ll have no medical coverage, no access to doctors, hospitals or any of my medications.”

“I’ve thought about it, and I would probably commit suicide at a certain point,” she adds as her voice dims to a hush.

Regardless of what happens, Alves wants to make the most of the time she does have. When she was healthier, she used to be a journalist and later, an economist.

She wants to write and edit if she recovers consistent enough strength in her hands, but admits she isn’t sure if that will happen. In the meantime, she’s been trying to learn a dictation software.

“How I’ll work on editing, I haven’t figured that out yet, but [the software] still won’t replace it,” Alves says. “I’ll never be able to make enough money again to pay for the insurance required to cover my kind of health. I am definitely in the catastrophic field.”