She is uninsured not because she is a lazy, freeloading deadbeat but because she and her husband are self-employed. They had been purchasing health insurance on the individual market along with 6% of the rest of the population. But after exhausting all of their resources trying to keep up with premiums of $1,500 a month, they had no choice but to cancel it.
She was also diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer late last year. Without health insurance, her options were extremely limited. No insurer would pick up someone in her circumstances.
Fortunately, the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan of “Obamacare” had already kicked in, and it made it possible for her to purchase insurance under a government program.
The woman, Spike Dolomite Ward, an artist who heads a nonprofit arts education organization in Los Angeles, writes in the LA Times:
I can tell you that “Obamacare” — at least the part I’ve participated in — works. A week ago, I had a double mastectomy after five months of chemotherapy. I have been receiving outstanding care in West Hills — no death panels, no rationing, no waiting, no government officials telling my doctors what to do, no denials of tests or treatments, none of the stuff that the plan’s critics said would happen.
And on the heels of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, she writes:
Not to be overly dramatic, but for me the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act was a matter of life and death. Because the law was largely upheld, I will be able to continue receiving treatment for breast cancer.
When Mrs. Ward first wrote about her situation in the LA Times, she received hate mail “from people who said [she] deserved to die. But there was also a lot of curiosity and a lot of encouragement and support. Much of the curiosity was from abroad. Canadians, French, Italian, British and Swiss cannot understand why healthcare reform is so politicized here; why most people don’t know anything about the Affordable Care Act; how we can be so cruel to one another; and why we criticize their healthcare systems.”
She continues to describe how her life was turned upside down when she got cancer: the chemotherapy, the brutal side effects, the surgery — all “stressful enough without having to worry about being able to pay for it.”
Finally, Ward urges Americans to learn more about the ACA and how it is likely to affect everyone’s life at some point.
If you feel that this is just one more liberal “sob story,” it is not. It is the story of how “Obamacare” has already immensely helped one American, and how, for her, “the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act was a matter of life and death.”
Read the rest of the story here.
