Of the many sins the Republicans have been committing recently, the gutting and repealing of the Affordable Care Act is one of the more reprehensible. The ACA has made it possible for so many Americans to get coverage and treat their medical issues. Before I worked in insurance, I had no idea how messed up and awful the system was (honestly - who really wants to think about insurance if they don't have to?). When I first started at my last job, the ACA was still in progress. I was in the office (albeit at the front desk) the day SCOTUS made their judgement in 2012. I saw them uphold the unlimited lifetime maximum on health plans, the age 26 coverage, and the no pre-existing condition limitations. If you don't work in insurance, you may not understand what a big damn deal this was. And even if you do understand, you may not realize exactly how you benefit from it.
Prior to the ACA, most plans had about a $1 million dollar maximum. That is all a plan would pay in your lifetime. That sounds like a ton of money, but when you get into anything that requires ongoing medication or treatment, it really isn't. Before the ACA, you didn't have these yearly annual and gynecological exams covered at 100% so you were paying those. Think about how much it costs to have a baby. To get cancer treatment. To get a transplant. You think $1 million your whole life is going to cover that? Quetzalcoatl help you if you had conditions that were going to need maintenance medication and visits.
The age 26 coverage is life changing. I think a lot of the hate on this is the typical Millennial hate - why don't you get a job with coverage and get off your parents' plan? Bad Boomer job advice is a whole other topic, but there are so many of us who went to college, worked, and now find ourselves unemployed or employed without the option of healthcare. Pre-ACA, Pennsylvania had something called Act 4. Act 4 would allow, in certain circumstances, dependents to be covered up to age 30. The insurance industry nicknamed it "The Slacker Act." Even people who benefit from this coverage don't understand it. After the ACA passed, someone I knew from college posted on Facebook about how much she hated it and how it was a bad system - blah, blah, blah. Someone else brought up the fact that she was on her parents' insurance and how much it had helped her - she wouldn't have been able to get coverage like that or have her health issues cared for without it. She said it was different for her to be covered. It's always different, isn't it?
Pre-existing conditions. Does no one understand what pre-existing conditions are?! An easy way to explain this is the movie Saw VI (spoilers ahead for a movie from 2009)! Jigsaw was out of people to hate by this point, so we went after predatory lenders and insurance companies. I'm not saying he's wrong, but it was a bit out of left field at this point. We see a flashback where a character is told his claim is being denied because of a pre-existing condition. Does that sound totally insane and horrible to you? Good, it should. But this is something that can happen without that pre-existing condition limitation. You fill out a form with your medical history, and if someone can find that you forgot about something, you can be denied even after the fact. Admitting it doesn't help - companies would just refuse to cover you. We aren't just talking about denials due to big claim costs like cancer or hemophilia - you could be denied for a previous heart attack, mental health hospitalization, diabetes, epilepsy, or oral surgery. For some people, it was better to not have a diagnosis because then they couldn't be be denied coverage. It was a system that kept the sick away from treatment.
Those are just three pieces of the ACA that helped millions of people. It's incredibly maddening to see people post on social media about how awful the ACA when they are benefiting from it or have no idea exactly what they hate. I was barely in insurance before the ACA, and even I can remember how awful it was if you weren't perfectly healthy. We can't go back there.
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