Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Editor’s note: This issue of Forefront went to press on Monday morning as members of Congress considered a deal to end the shutdown without a guaranteed extension of health care subsidies.
Before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies could and did refuse to insure me because I was (and remain) diabetic.
I was building a solo legal practice, and the only way I could procure health insurance was through Indiana’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Association, a high-risk pool. High risk meant high premiums, limited coverage and a waiting period of three months before I could receive coverage for a pre-existing condition. There was no federal alternative to the ICHIA. I paid $800 per month (in today’s dollars, that is approximately $1,200) for bare-bones catastrophic health insurance.
My doctors and I could not get my diabetes under control. I needed a procedure the ICHIA refused to cover, and I did not have the thousands of dollars necessary to pay for the surgery my doctors recommended. Without the surgery, my future offered a real probability of losing body parts, my vision or a collapse of my body’s systems. Further, even with ICHIA, I could not afford the cost of the future medical treatment for diabetic consequences. I was wedged tightly between a rock and the proverbial hard place. I was beyond depressed.
But then the ACA was enacted, and, miraculously, for less than $500 per month, the cost of the surgery necessary to prevent my bleak medical future was covered. When I got the letter confirming my insurance coverage, I cried.
The surgery saved my life. I recently asked my endocrinologist about my life expectancy, as I fully expected it would be shorter due to my diabetes. My endocrinologist told me that as my diabetes had remained well under control, I can live a very long life. My diabetes has not impacted my heart or other organs. In other words, I am alive because the ACA made my surgery possible.
This is why I support the government shutdown over the Republican budget cuts of the subsidies for health insurance premiums purchased through the ACA marketplace. I cannot imagine the pain of the parent of a child with a chronic condition requiring expensive medical care and having to decide whether to pay the health insurance premium or pay the rent or purchase food for the remaining children, etc. If you have never had to deal with the heart-scorching decisions regarding how to pay for expensive medical treatment, then you have indeed been blessed. And while it was one thing to negotiate the road for myself, having to do it for a child or a loved one is a burden I cannot imagine having to carry.
If the subsidies for health insurance are not passed, the working poor, the middle class, the farmers—anyone who does not receive health insurance as an employment or government benefit—are going to have to make the decision: Do I pay a health insurance premium I cannot afford and let other bills go, or do I decline the health insurance and take the risk, knowing that if I lose, it could mean permanent injury, death or, at a minimum, a lifetime of indebtedness?
The ACA was enacted to provide affordable health care for all people needing it. I have no idea how we lost sight of this vision or how it became a political basketball. But I hope and pray this government shutdown works, as there is no other alternative to the ACA. There is no other hope.•
__________
Celestino-Horseman is an Indianapolis attorney. Send comments to [email protected].
Click here for more Forefront columns.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
