I’m worried sick. I’ve worried myself to sleep every night since the election over the impending end of Obamacare. This is a disaster for our family.
Our son’s medication will be $760 a month without Obamacare. He works part-time while he’s in school, but his employer doesn’t offer health care for part timers. He’s 18 months away from graduating from his community college (no. no coverage available through school), so we’re looking at nearly $15,000 in drug costs. $15,000. That will fry the little retirement nest egg we worked so hard to save, and we’ll still have to borrow, if someone will lend to us. So, because of this election result, we will get to choose between our old age and our son’s health and future. And, of course, we will choose to support our beloved boy’s chance to have a future, but the loss of that tiny nest egg is real. and painful. and scary.
I’m disabled and teaching from my wheelchair, now. At the most optimistic estimate, I have 2 more years doing what I love, before I won’t be able to teach, any more. The chronic pain is so ... difficult. Our state has a state law that disallows teachers from participating in Social Security, so I pay for private disability insurance. It will only pay out %50 of my current salary for 2 years. I’m 58, and I won’t be eligible for Medicare for almost 10 years. A decade. Even though I’ll probably get COBRA for a couple of years, I probably won’t be able to afford it. Teacher’s pension? It will be pretty little with only 15 years vested, and you don’t get the healthcare without being in for 20 years. So, I’m looking at trying to get private insurance for about 8 years. Disabled already, with chronic pain, and a slow growing tumor on my spinal cord? No company will take me, without the ACA PEC protections. Without prescription insurance, my medications will be $670 a month. Without them, it feels like I’m being burned at the stake 24/7, so that’s pretty scary since I know what that means that I’ll have to do.
My dear Husband’s reaction when the results came in was, “Well, I’ll just have to work until I die.” I love him so very much, and I know that he very willingly will do just that, for me. But the dear man is 69, now! Yes, he can get me onto his company’s catastrophic kind of policy, but the $3500 deductible is a real problem. It won’t cover my prescriptions and regular steroid treatments and physical therapy — and Damn it!! The love of my life is going to work until the day he dies? Doesn’t he deserve to have a little bit of time at the end of his life to rest, grow his roses and write that book he always wanted to? And, that he’d be doing it for ME? That just breaks my heart and makes me cry.
Elections have consequences, and, the effect this election is going to have on my family and me has me worried sick. This is what losing this election and losing Obamacare will look like. For just one family.
There will be 20 million more stories like this.