What Republicans feared most about the Affordable Care Act is happening. Now that people are finding out what is actually in the Affordable Care Act, they are starting to like it.
In an article for Time magazine, Steven Brill tells the story of an Ohio couple who were initially against the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t think Obamacare will help us. I don’t want anything to do with it. I hear a lot of bad things about it–that it doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions and it’s too expensive,” said Stephanie Recchi, whose husband Sean was diagnosed with cancer last year.
When Sean received his diagnosis and started to seek treatment, the Ohio couple found out that the insurance plan they did have was essentially worthless and paid nearly $84,000 in advance just to develop a treatment plan.
According to Brill’s report, shortly after the launch of the healthcare exchanges, the Recchis met with an insurance broker who helped them navigate the marketplaces. The pair discovered that their health insurance would go from $469 a month for a plan that was essentially worthless to $17 dollars a month, which included a subsidy provided by the ACA. The new plan would cover their entire family and have a $12,000 deductible.
Even better for the family, once the broker calculated their health care costs based on their actual earned income the family learned that their health insurance would be free. That’s because of Republican Gov. John Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage in Ohio. Just more than half of the states in the country have expanded Medicaid coverage under the ACA. Many states, especially states with Republican legislatures or governors have decided not to expand the coverage. A fact that Vice President Biden mentioned during a speech on Thursday. “If Republican governors and the state legislatures the states of Texas, Florida, and North Carolina and others would act responsibly,” said Biden, “we could cover another 5 million people with the stroke of a pen.” Resistance to the law remains firm in many states, but in Ohio Stephanie Rechhi has a new view on the Affordable Care Act calling the law “wonderful.”
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