The Affordable care Act, aka ObamaCare, has done some really wonderful things for many Americans I ran across a story, that needs retelling, about how such care is literally saving a woman’s life. Sadly that story also has a flip side. It’s about how Republicans are trying to kill her, by taking away her care.
When I speak to Jennifer Causor for the first time, she rings with enthusiasm as she describes her new exercise program. It’s a “boot camp” themed program, “which is something I never thought I’d be able to do,” Jenn tells me over the phone. “It is so hard, but it is so awesome!” she proclaims, before describing a time when she was so tired from a kettlebell workout that she actually started crying.
Jenn’s ability to lift kettlebells, or, for that matter, to drive a car or to walk to her own mailbox, is nothing short of miraculous compared to the life she faced just a little more than a year ago. For her entire life, Jenn has lived with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that caused her lungs to fill with fluid and that still interferes with her digestive system. She takes medicine every time she eats to help her process food.
When Jenn first started exhibiting symptoms, they meant nothing more than “having a cough” and having “to take pills when I eat.” When she was in her 20s, however, the symptoms grew quite severe. She was constantly filling her body with expensive intravenous drugs. “I had to breathe lots of medicine through a nebulizer,” a process that “took hours a day.” Living with cystic fibrosis, Jenn says, was like having two jobs. “It was like, I worked full time. I worked 40 hours . . . but then, again, having CF was like a full-time job within itself.” In 2012, her health took an even worse turn when one of her lungs collapsed and she was hospitalized for a week. Not long after she was released, both of her lungs collapsed and her doctors struggled for two months to keep them inflated. She lived in the hospital that entire time.
In a five month span, however, two things changed that offered Jenn a new chance at life. The first was a double lung transplant. On August 29, 2013, Jenn received two new lungs that were free of cystic fibrosis. Not long thereafter, she drew her first breath as an adult from lungs that were not constantly filling up with choking mucus. Although Jenn will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life, she can now speak on the phone again. Her husband Eder can touch her face again or kiss her cheek again without triggering a fit of coughing. Jenn is not confined to a hospital anymore. She lifts kettlebells instead.
Five men in Washington could sentence Jenn to the same uncertainty she endured before the Affordable Care Act. They could potentially sentence her to die
The second change came on the first day of 2014 when the most important provisions of the Affordable Care Act took full effect. That meant that, for the first time in her life, Jenn knew that, no matter what happened, she would have health insurance. For Jenn, Obamacare means that insurers must cover her, despite her expensive preexisting condition. And it means that she is not facing a death sentence if she is unable to obtain health insurance through her own job or her husband’s.
Except for the fact that a group of lawyers are trying to take this certainty away from her. Last July, two Republican judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted to defund much of the Affordable Care Act, including provisions which ensure that Jenn’s insurance is affordable. Moreover, although the full DC Circuit recently withdrew this decision and announced that it would rehear the case before a much larger panel of 13 judges, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit have not exactly hidden their desire to get this case before the conservative Roberts Court where four justices already voted once to repeal Obamacare. If the justices ultimately take this case, which is known as Halbig v. Burwell, and if one more of them agrees that Obamacare should be defunded, that could trigger a death spiral that could collapse the law’s health insurance marketplace in much of the country.
Five men in Washington could sentence Jenn to the same uncertainty she endured before the Affordable Care Act. They could potentially sentence her to die…
Inserted from <Think Progress>
Click through for the rest of this extensive, in depth article. Republicans have a plan for Jenn. It’s the RepubliCare Death Benefit!
Save Lives! Get Out The Vote!!
Remember compassionate conservatism? Neither do we. Probably because it never materialized.
