Sen. Tom Harkin, you owe me a PERSONAL apology

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Wednesday December 03, 2014 · 11:41 AM PST

2014/12/03 · 11:41

The Affordable Care Act saved my life.

I took care of my Dad for 10 years (Parkinson's disease, he died two years ago at age 94). As an unpaid family caregiver I couldn't even get MediCal because I had no dependent children.

I signed up for Covered California as soon as possible. Went to the doctor in January 2014. She gave me the usual tests, including a mammogram.

The first thing they found was Stage 0 breast cancer, which can stay dormant for years. The second thing they found in the lumpectomy was 7mm of Stage 1 invasive breast cancer.

Yes, the stuff waited until I finally was allowed to buy insurance before it turned nasty. That's how lucky I was.

I said to one doctor that I would have been uninsured through all this without the ACA. He replied, "You would have been dead."

Sen. Tom Harkin and others who say the ACA shouldn't have been passed, you owe me a PERSONAL apology. (As well as the thousands of others who would have been dead without the ACA. I mourn those for whom the ACA didn't come in time.)

There is more to this story. It isn't finished yet, and I wasn't going to write a diary until it's completely over. But when I read the smug comments in and to a diary that agrees with Sen. Harkin (who knows full well that the votes were never there to pass any form of single payer) I had to respond with more than just a comment buried in the responses to that diary.

I have to leave, so I won't be here to tend this diary.

But I think it probably can stand on it's own.

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