once again, they have excluded themselves

image via:  https://dredf.org/2017/05/01/national-day-action-opposition-american-health-care-act/

With the exception of the less than a year between the time Marc and I married and when he quit his job at Hughes Tool Company to help build my little etched glass commission business, I have never had health insurance. And then he didn't either. Being working artists and living on a minimal and unpredictable income pretty much precluded a $600 or more per person monthly health insurance premium. Fortunately, we were and are blessed with good health and were always able to just pay as needed. Eventually, I reached the magic age of 65 and Medicare and supplemental insurance. I still have co-pays for office visits and tests, this round with the cardiologist cost me $219 including the original visit to my primary and the whole throat spasm/choking exploration with my primary and the ENT earlier this year was almost $400 though we have received two partial refunds from the hospital since for the tests they charged me for. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to check these two things out, I guess, even if the visits proved, ultimately, unnecessary but before I was eligible for Medicare, I wouldn't have even considered it. Had I had insurance before Medicare, I would have had a high premium that would have been more than my mortgage and a new car payment put together with a high yearly deductible for a policy that would not have covered any pre-existing conditions I might have had. So even with insurance I would have ended up paying the full amount for doctor visits and tests. It would have been, in essence, catastrophic coverage and had I had to use it, would have bankrupted me anyway.

Then Obama came along and helped change that scenario for millions of people and did things like make the insurance companies actually provide medical care with your monthly premium money and stopped them refusing to cover pre-existing conditions. I was just a few years away from Medicare so I never availed myself of the ACA especially since our Republican governor refused to accept the Medicaid expansion that would have helped underwrite policies for people like me because...Republican...so it was cheaper for us to just pay the penalty.

Now, with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a Republican president they are hell bent on taking that coverage away from big parts of the middle class, the working poor, and the elderly because, OMG, the uber rich are being taxed to help cover the costs, a pittance really compared to their worth. They want to take us straight back to for-profit health care (which used to be against the law in this country) where the insurance companies get rich and the people get screwed and health care costs skyrocket. They are trying to convince us all that 20+ million people won't lose coverage and that the elderly won't have to pay up to 8 times what they pay now, that life time caps on the amount insurance companies will have to pay out for your care isn't a bad thing, that when they cut back Medicaid to the bone all our nursing home residents won't be turned out into the street and all the children born with disabilities won't lose care, that nobody will miss having pre-existing conditions covered with just about every part of being female now, apparently, a pre-existing condition because, vagina. But fear not men, your viagra will still be covered just not birth control so better get used to wrapping that rascal. Even my coverage isn't even safe as they want to cut back Medicare as well.

So far, the Republicans have put forth such cruel and heinous plans that they can't even get enough Republican votes to repeal and replace the ACA but they are trying again next week to pass their version of a health care bill that they think is so wonderful that they have, once again, excluded themselves from, keeping all the goodies that Obama gave us for themselves while denying them to us.

Y'all know what to do...make those phone calls and vote against cruelty and hypocrisy.