Access to Medical Care: Can Your Family Afford to Lose It?

It was during the economic downturn in the early 90s when I realized the importance of having access to affordable medical care. I had recently been laid off. My husband’s manufacturing business was struggling, but he was determined to meet his payroll every week (even when he couldn’t pay himself) and help maintain insurance benefits for his small, loyal staff. We had two children under three years old and I was afraid. I remember asking the local librarian if I could take the grocery coupons from the library’s newspaper as I didn’t want to spend the 50 cents on my own copy (I couldn’t). I remember only buying the absolute necessities while learning how to negotiate with creditors. Most of all, I remember what it meant to still have health coverage.

One night, our newborn woke screaming from pain with a raging temperature– another ear infection. I rocked him for hours to keep him calm while the acetaminophen kicked in. Still, desperate as I felt in those days, in the dark of that night, I remember feeling overwhelming gratitude, because I could take my suffering son to the doctor in the morning while other mothers didn’t have that option. I remember crying over the injustice of it all, thankful that despite our financial circumstances we still had healthcare.

It’s this basic need of mothers and fathers everywhere that’s at stake this November, in the richest country on earth. The need to protect our children. In my District, we have a choice between Rep. Lee Zeldin—who has become a GOP extremist under President Trump, and who is hell bent on taking that basic need away from more than 23,100 individuals in his district who are covered by the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—and Perry Gershon who promises to build on the success of the ACA.

As for the hundreds of thousands of us in CD-1 with employer sponsored insurance? We will lose protections like the prohibition on annual and lifetime limits and coverage of pre-existing conditions. Because the only plans floated by the new GOP would impose punishingly unaffordable premiums for patients with asthma, cancer, substance abuse, pregnancy and other pre-existing conditions. In other words, no coverage at all.

Mr. Trump, Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence have explicitly said repealing the ACA is at the top of their agenda if they maintain their majority in the Congress and the Senate. And since Zeldin has sided with the far right by voting with them 87 percent of the time, you can bet it’ll be at the top of his agenda too. The choice is clear: vote for Perry Gershon on November 6 and maintain the basic need of your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers in CD-1 to access to affordable healthcare.

B. Craz
East Patchogue, NY