One of the tens of millions of people who could lose healthcare coverage under the proposed Republican plan is a former member of Congress. Late last week, former Rep. Donna Edwards disclosed in the Washington Post that she has multiple sclerosis, diagnosed soon after she lost the primary for Maryland Senate in 2016. “My future health care is uncertain,” she writes in an open letter to her former House colleagues. “I am not employed, and I pay $800 a month for my COBRA coverage, which ends in June 2018. I’m not sure what I’ll do then.”
Edwards was one of the presiding officers when the Affordable Care Act pass the House:
And yet, with the health-care bills you are now advancing, here I am. If we return to a time when people with preexisting conditions can be charged more than healthy people, it will surely result in my never being able to afford insurance again. If we return to a time of lifetime caps, I will no longer have health insurance.
But Edwards’ concern isn’t just for herself. She’s taken time to get to know other people who would be affected by Trumpcare:
In January, I set out in a 25-foot motor home and logged 12,000 miles through 27 states over three months. I talked to a lot of people in Alabama and Mississippi, Arizona and Texas, Kansas and Indiana. We talked about our dreams and aspirations — about jobs, education and health care, about children and grandchildren. I heard people’s stories about losing jobs, working in retirement, not having health care and family members dying. They told me about their cancer, diabetes and heart disease. I told them about my MS — all strangers.
Most of the people I met in RV parks across the country were Republicans. They had no idea that I once was privileged to serve in Congress as a Democrat. And this story, my diagnosis of MS, is not about me; it’s about them — millions of Americans who are trusting you to help, not harm.
Like them, I’m scared. Like them, I’m scared of being sick and not being able to afford to go to my doctor or purchase the medicine that is saving my life; like them, I’m worried that one day I will have to sell my home or spend my retirement savings on my health care. I don’t know what I will do next or whether I will run for public office again. I do know that my MS will not stop me. But not having health-care coverage because of my MS could stop me permanently.
Edwards surely knows as well as anybody how unlikely House Republicans are to listen to her story and take action to protect her and people like her. But she had to try, and it’s to their party’s everlasting shame if or when they refuse to hear her.
Trumpcare is a nightmare. Millions would lose their health insurance, rates will go up for women and people with disabilities and it ends Medicaid as we know it. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121 and give them a very angry piece of your mind. Then, tell us how it went.