A health commissioner's perspective: The ACA safeguards life (The Hill)
Thursday Jan 12th, 2017
The start of the 115th Congress has focused on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Legislators speak about repealing a policy, about political strategies.
For me, as a doctor, as Baltimore City’s doctor, it’s about my patients and their lives.
Eight years ago, before the ACA, I treated a 36-year old man, a father of two toddlers. He stopped taking his seizure medications because insurance companies wouldn’t cover him. He had a choice: pay thousands of dollars a month, out of pocket, or ensure that his family had rent and food. As many others would have done, he chose his family, and let his medications lapse.
By the time he was brought to the ER, he had suffered a grand mal seizure. He was unconscious and continually seizing. We gave him medications. We put a breathing tube in. We did everything we could, but he never came out of the coma, and he died.
I think about him and his family when I hear discussions of the ACA. I think about the 40,000 people in my city who would be uninsured if not for the ACA. My patients tell me that they’re scared.