For me the Affordable Care Act is not just an abstraction or talking point or political football.
In 2013 and 2014 I helped educate and sign people up for Covered California. I saw people who had gone without coverage for years and saw their joy and relief when they were able to get coverage. It was some of the most rewarding work I've ever done.
You often hear from the ACA’s detractors that it gives free health care to a bunch of lazy moochers. Well, my uncle Johnny got a job in 2010 working at an auto parts warehouse in Oakland where he worked 6 days a week for $9 an hour. His employers were scumbags who increased his hourly pay by just a dollar over 4 years. And there were no benefits. By the way he had diabetes and was in his mid-50s, so he was priced out of the individual market.
Then in 2013 along came Covered California and Johnny was able to get affordable coverage, a silver plan at $50 a month. In 2015 he found another job that offered health coverage but it cost $300 a month and would've taken up 15% of his income. Fortunately the ACA held that if your employer coverage cost more than 9.5% of your income, you don't have to take it and can get an ACA plan. Johnny did that and kept his plan, but now for $95 a month because his pay increased. Still, much better than $300 a month.
Before the ACA Johnny had gone without coverage for 5 years. To deal with his diabetes he bummed pills off of friends, and when he ran out he did without. At times he would be on the verge of collapse after work. After he got coverage through the ACA his health improved markedly as now he had regular access to medicine and doctors.
Then there's my mom. Her business shut down during the Great Recession and she got a job working as a telemarketer. At the same time she was watching my brother who had schizophrenia and a substance abuse problem, so she was unable to work full time. Her employer did not provide benefits.
Then in 2013 California expanded MediCal (our state’s Medicaid) under the ACA and my mom, because she made less than $15,000 a year, was eligible and signed up.
The telemarketing company she worked at then folded in 2015 and since then my mom has been working translating documents from English to Mandarin for a businessman based out of Hong Kong. But her pay remained below $15,000 a year so she was able to keep her MediCal. Then in 2016 she got diagnosed with diabetes, which runs in my family. Fortunately she had MediCal and got treatment. She's doing great today.
Finally, there's my 7 year-old daughter. About a month ago my wife found a bald spot on the back of my daughter’s head. We took her to a doctor and they diagnosed her with alopecia arreata, a disease where your immune system attacks your follicles and causes hair to fall out.
Fortunately my daughter has great health coverage through my wife’s plan. But with all the discussion of Trumpcare recently, I was hit with the realization that my daughter now has a preexisting condition. So if Trumpcare becomes law, when my daughter becomes an adult and for some reason she does not have health coverage through an employer, she could be denied coverage.
Right now I am beside myself with anger and bitterness, and not just at Trump and Republicans. I am furious at the tens of millions of Americans who allowed this to happen by voting for Trump and the Republican Congress.
A few months ago Markos wrote a post where he said he was happy that coal miners might be losing health coverage and a lot of folks on the left, including myself, denounced him for it. Though I, a Chinese American liberal living in the Bay Area, have almost nothing in common with those coal miners, I did not wish to see them suffer because they are my fellow Americans and out of basic decency. And what can I say, I'm a bleeding heart liberal. Liberals aren't supposed to judge others for their personal failings or bad decisions. That's what conservatives do.
But I've gotta say, right now I have a lot of bitterness in my heart toward people like those coal miners and many others, predominantly from Middle America, who voted for Trump and the Republicans, and thus voted to screw people like my family members.
If Trumpcare becomes a reality, I’d like to believe that I will continue to maintain compassion and sympathy for folks in Middle America, people like those coal miners and their families, despite our gaping cultural differences. I'd like to believe that our bonds as countrymen and human beings will remain. But millions of other Americans who will be harmed by Trumpcare may not be as understanding and compassionate as I am.
And frankly my well of compassion is not inexhaustible. These last few months I have interacted with many denizens of Middle America, and time and time again I've seen the argument, “I'm sorry about your uncle and mom, but it's not my responsibility to pay for their care.” Today I have seen many of them celebrating the possibility of taking health coverage away from my family members. And it has filled me with burning rage.
And since the denizens of Middle America love to talk about personal responsibility — just the other day Rep. Mo Brooks basically said people with preexisting conditions are to blame for their condition because they didn't live good lives — if Trumpcare comes to pass and my uncle and mom lose coverage, and my daughter becomes uninsurable, I will not hold Trump and the Republicans solely responsible. I will hold the people who voted for Trump and the Republicans personally responsible.
I keep hearing about how we "coastal liberal elitists” don't have enough sympathy for the struggling folk in Middle America. But while there's been some liberals who have looked down upon folks in Middle America with callous indifference, I've also seen a lot of liberals engaging in self-reflection, saying that we need to be better and that we need to pay more attention to the plight of folks in Middle America. Furthermore it is liberals who passed things like Social Security, Medicare, and the ACA which have benefited people in Middle America enormously.
But I see very little sympathy in return from folks in Trump’s America. And it burns me up inside. My mom and uncle and daughter and myself aren't elitists. My mom and uncle are working class people. But because they're from California, and because they live in diverse, secular, urban America, and because they're Chinese immigrants, they apparently are not worthy of much compassion from Trump and his supporters.
I am a very compassionate person, it's why I identify as a liberal. But as I said, my well of compassion is not inexhaustible, and right now it is beginning to run dangerously low with regards to the denizens of Trump’s America. If Trumpcare becomes a reality, that compassion may well run out and give way to indifference or even a desire for payback. I'm only human after all.
This is how a country gets torn apart.