AHCA RANT

That title is correct... this is not going to be an elegant well thought our piece... this is raw emotion. Feel free to jump off this ship now if you want... tomorrow I will go back to writing a Jillian health update since she had an appointment today but for now for my own mental health I needed a rant... so read if you wish keep scrolling if you want.

I don't think I will forget where I was when I got the notification that the AHCA passed the house... I was sitting in a dr appointment for one of my children in a hospital that only takes kids that fall under the term "pre existing condition" In all openness I was in a hospital that I will not see a bill from because they raise funds to cover the costs however the ONLY thing we see them for is Jillian's leg braces. That is one of the tiniest things in Jilli's medical journey. Helpful yes. We are very thankful for them, we don't want to downplay that at all, but 99% of medical things our girls have done are not done at a hospital like this.

Imagine looking around the room. Imagine feeling like our healthcare system just took a big kick to all of those kids. Because EVERY ONE OF THEM has a pre existing condition!

So lets break down some of the things in AHCA because I keep seeing this "lovely" post going around Facebook being a jerk to Jimmy Kimmel about how if he was getting his healthcare from the exchanges he might (might is a big word there) not have been able to go to the hospitals to get his care his son got. (What that article also fails to talk about is the fact that states where medicaid expansion took place have a lot better market place in comparison to states that don't but hey we like to post one sided articles... if we are honest that is what a lot of facebook has become)

The reality if health insurance does not have emotion in it and just went by cost my children would not be covered. Facts and figured do not have compassion. Facts and figures don't care about my kids. We don't have medicaid because its cheep (although other countries with universal healthcare pay a lot less then we do in the US for private care and some of those places cover more then here... go watch healthcare triage if you want it explained) we have it because people have a heart. We don't have RMH because it is cheep, we have it because people care. Guess what, read your Bible, there was a guy who promoted compassion.

So yes while this bill still can not outright block my kids it can charge them ANY amount (there is NO upper limit) People are claiming to hate ACA because it is unaffordable... guess what... you just made healthcare less affordable... I thought that was not your goal!? But I don't think that was really Paul Ryan's goal... I think his goal was for his side to "win" and that is how we all loose.

So lets go over some things that will hurt people:

-AHCA would slash by about $880 billion over 10 years for medicaid... if you don't think that slash in funding will not directing impact my kids you are nuts. Medicaid is already not a free hand out. We still have to beg for many things (right now we are begging for them to pay for medication for my child to breathe and of therapy she desperately needs... I am not sure what part of that is me getting whatever I want covered 100% at the cost of tax payers...)

-Starting in 2020 the money states get for medicaid will be on a per person dollar amount. It will increase with the rate of inflation however healthcare costs rise a lot faster then the rate of inflation therefor this will always be underfunded. This will also put a bigger hardship on the states. I get states rights but this is like a giant budget screw you to states. Yes I am thankful its not automatically block grants but states could opt into getting a block grant instead of per person (and there is some incentive for them to do that).

-States can opt out of the essential 10 which could get rid of preventative care which would hurt my kids. Habilitative services... a fancy word that most people don't understand is importation... see before ACA many plans only covered PT/OT/Speech if you had a health event that required it like a stroke to help you get back to where you were before the medical event... but they wouldn't cover my kids therapies because it is helping them to gain skills they didn't have before.

-Life time maxes could be on their way back

-They can now charge us whatever they want for health insurance because of the girls pre existing conditions. And think you don't have a pre existing condition... I get they are saying they are setting up protections for high risk pools but the amount they are setting aside I have seen multiple places calls what they have set aside a drop in the bucket... makes them feel better but doesn't really do shit to help people. High risk pools are unaffordible to the people who are in them once again making insurance only for the healthy.

-Kids in special ed. Most people do not realize how much of "healthcare" money goes to funding programs in schools. So grand, you have kicked the same population multiple times...

-they exempted themselves from the ACHA... that should tell you something

-And no you are not going to find this point on most new sites but if you follow me on facebook you saw the article I posted this week about how the rate of children being aborted because of testing coming back showing a genetic condition continues to go up. Having read into it one of the factors that play into families making this choice is that they do not think they will financially be able to take care of the child and often don't think giving the child up for adoption will be a solution because of lack of government funding to take care of kids with special needs.... What does this bill do to help that... nothing it makes it worse. Lots of people like to think the only place abortions happen are at planned parenthood and only by women who sleep around a lot... and that is not true, babies with special needs is a growing group of children that are aborted and this bill leads into the worry of if that child is born will they be able to have healthcare so you just kicked yourself in not thinking this through all the way...


Now yes I get that many of the things are up to the states to decide if they are going to go through with opting out of things. 1. that leads to a lot of uncertainty 2. even if NO state ops into block grants, getting rid of the essential 10 and charging its the principle... its the act of including the opt outs. Just the choice is enough to hurt. My heart is hurt. My head is hurt. Remember I am not someone who is uneducated about healthcare in this country. I read a lot and from multiple sources. I have conversations about it with people and not just ones that think like me. Their action today felt like a sucker punch. Even if it goes no where, there have been things said that people can't take back. There is still damage done even if this bill stops here.

I just have to keep thinking this is not what most of America voted for... that this not what most people were asking for. I get that the ACA is not perfect... I never said it was... Obama didn't say it was

So can we stop this political bull shit now and actually do what is right? Lets work together to figure out ways to cover more people with less expense. I understand there will always be trade offs. I understand that without emotion my kids will never have health insurance. But I also understand that trading off paying less while you are young to pay a lot more when you are old and on a fixed income is dumb and not fiscally responsible (this is what the AHCA does...) You wouldn't tell someone to do that in any other area financially...

I am also struggling with the hypocrite in all of this. Republicans had criticisms of how ACA was passed and I can see their point of view on some of the points but then they turned around and did the same thing. You can't always say that you are mad at the other party for not being the party that makes the right choices... it should start with you. Worry about what you do first. Worry about how you pass bills. Worry about what you say. If you want the other side to work with you start by working with them. Each likes to yell about the other side and then does the exact same thing. It is old. And republicans when you do it while waving the Christian flag you make rest of us look bad and I am tired of that too.

So when you think about this all think about this story... this week as I have been battling it out with med supply Jilli heard me talking and started to sob. Why... because she couldn't believe someone would take syringes away from her because don't they know thats how she gets meds!? She is 4 and understands that... think about how it will be to explain all of this to her someday... You can play all the social experiments you would like with healthcare but at the end of the day this could really hurt my kids... Do you have the guts to look them in the eye and tell them you are for that?