What are you going to do if Republicans take away Obamacare? Even if you’re paying full price for a plan you got through the marketplace, what will you do if your plan and the protections you rely on are weakened? That’s a question that’s reshaping some people’s lives even before Republicans have gotten a bill through the Senate, Sarah Kliff reports.
Kliff talked to a man who’s taking less medication now to hoard pills for the future; a couple who are moving from Georgia to New York, figuring that New York will keep more protections in place than Georgia; a woman who’s cut back on contributions to her retirement account to have savings ready to use on medical expenses; and a woman who may close her consulting business to take a job with employer-provided insurance. Right there you can see how repealing Obamacare can reshape people’s lives even if they maintain health coverage—people see less freedom to decide that self-employment or part-time work is the right path for them, people are afraid for their futures, people are ready to move to live somewhere with more stable coverage.And the people Kliff talked to aren’t necessarily happy about the choices they’re making. They’re just looking for the best way to protect their health.
“I’m not the only self-employed person I know who spends a lot of time trying to figure out: When do I hit the escape button, and where do escape to?” says Stacie Boschma, a 41-year-old freelance copywriter in Atlanta who relies on the marketplace for coverage.
Boschma has Type I diabetes, and she and her wife have consulted an immigration lawyer about moving to the Netherlands, a country with universal healthcare.
According to woman who’s moving from part-time to full-time work:
“I made the plan this week because we cannot have this stress anymore,” she says. “It’s been hard; I go to sleep at night stressed out about it. I manage my family’s finances, I go to bed stressed about headlines, I wake up and think, ‘How will we pay for health care if it goes away?’”
Republicans want us to forget how many Americans lived with that constant stress before Obamacare—even if you had health care, you knew it could go away the minute anything went wrong. But that’s what they want to bring us back to.
Repealing Obamacare is a nightmare. Millions would lose their health insurance, and the cost of premiums would skyrocket for many people. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121 and give them a very angry piece of your mind. (After you call, please tell us how it went.)