Obamacare created a lifeline for many families: #tellusatoday

Letter to the editor:

At five months of pregnancy, my sister discovered her baby had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. The doctors offered her a choice: Terminate her pregnancy or attempt to treat the baby once she was born. My sister and her husband are not wealthy; however, because they had insurance they opted for the latter option.

My niece was born in September and six days later had her first open heart surgery. Three months later, she had a second surgery. The baby remains in the hospital. She developed a cold. Every day she struggles to breathe and every day we wonder if it will be her last. A common cold could kill her.

The baby has had exorbitant medical expenses and still has a long way to go — she will need expensive medication for life and eventually a heart transplant. Before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) she would have likely reached her maximum lifetime coverage by the time she was three months old.

How are people living paycheck-to-paycheck supposed to afford this? How can my niece possibly survive without it? How can those who claim to be “pro-life” insist my sister give birth to a seriously ill child and then deny care once she’s born?

As I wrote this, I got word from my sister that the baby had an episode.

Please don’t take her only lifeline away.

Ellen Furlong; Bloomington, Ill.

Facebook comments are edited for clarity and grammar:

Solving the real problems of a relatively few people does not require creating problems for everyone.

— Richard Bunce

I would not put it past Republicans to “repeal” the Affordable Care Act and then come back up with their own. They could call it “Trumpcare” and that would guarantee all the Donald Trump supporters would be in love with it.

— Branden Makana

All the Obamacare supporters ever talk about is the minority of people who were helped by the law, ignoring that the majority of us were hurt with much higher premiums and deductibles.

— Sal Maggiore

Policing the USA

We asked our followers their thoughts on how we can improve the health care system in America. Tweets are edited for clarity and grammar:

We could improve our health care by simply getting the government the heck out of it!

— @tab91787

Move to a single-payer system along the lines of Medicare for all.

— @TerriSilver

Take some of the billions we send to other countries and use that money to help those who can’t afford health care here.

— @JoshCSmith

Figure out how working families can get affordable care while those who don’t work get free care. It’s backwards.

— @The_Hovian

Single payer!

— @S_E_Phillips

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