Recently, my father fell. It was at work and just down one step. A freak accident that could happen to anyone.
Luckily he is 1. a Veteran and 2. old enough to qualify/be on Medicare.
Consequently he got rushed to the hospital because he was in waay too much pain. He tore his Quadriceps Tendon. He will be ok.
I slept on the floor last night at the Hospital to keep him Company. And I thought about that. He was treated extremely well. If he needed water the nurses came. No red-tape for surgery. He doesn't have to worry about getting a $40,000.00 bill.
It made me wonder (as I presume an Actuary could guess) all those not as lucky as he and my family. Whose first question would have been "do you have insurance?" That is how many people don't have to fear that question, and will start answering "when can you come in for your next therapy/surgery/etc. aka keep living your life" are there possibly now who may not have been able to live, maintained their quality of life, lived or died with dignity. I guess before they were also collateral damage of the Iraq war in that we wouldn't pay for them but we'd pay for Iraq. Now we can live.
It'd be great to see youtube vids short ones of people saying something to that effect, or knowing the stats when some conservative just gives it a general label and you can personalize it by saying x amount of people now can live, or look at this video where a person may say "thank you _, you saved me/my cousin/brother/father here is his picture he know can live, or has a chance."
I don't think your typical republican realizes that Roberts gavel could have been a big red button taking people off of life saving treatments. And again, important social considerations that result from such a burden.
I venture to guess now some who may have gone bankrupt will make their car payment. But most importantly they can live, finally, because they live in a civilized country coming to its senses. Not just because they were lucky enough to be employed.
I would think that an extremely compelling bumper sticker.
The ACA has SAVED 25,000 lives. Or improved. I have to think that bridge programs will begin to.
Not just the people that have cancer who, sorry we don't cover chemo, and you ran out of assets. Die penniless, at least you don't have to pay Probate fees.
I thought about all the people who if something like this happened, it won't create a huge financial mountain that they can never recover from. Say my Dad was between jobs and not paying Cobra 20 years ago. When he had two kids and a family to support.
Before the ACA I imagine it probably would have greatly added to the probability of 1. Divorce 2. Psychiatric Issues for me and my sister (as financial problems are the number 1 stressor I believe leading to divorce, and divorce at a young age leads to a myriad of developmental issues).
Sorry I am rambling. But being at the Hospital, seeing that everyone there isn't acting like it's the end of the world and realizing that hey somebody out there who may have died, may have had to sell their house, move their kids to a worse school, won't have to made it a little more bearable to be there.
Thanks for listening.