To the editor:

I’m a cancer survivor. When we moved back home to Bloomington, I called Anthem to ask about my options. Their representative actually laughed at me and said, “Why should we insure you?”

Why do we want to go back to those days?

I finally got coverage through the high-risk pool — one of the ideas Congress has for people, like me and millions of others, with pre-existing conditions.

They’ve been tried and don’t work. They are expensive. My husband and I paid $14,000 for our coverage six years ago. Because we had to have two individual polices, his deductible was $5,000 and mine was $3,000.

Since the state picks up most of the cost, they end up capping how many people they let in. Nationally, only about 225,000 were in high-risk pools before the ACA was enacted. In Florida, the number was just 12,000 — a drop in the bucket compared to 27 percent of those under 65 thought to have pre-existing conditions.

Politicians promise to set aside money to pay for it, but if it’s not in a law, like Medicare, they can, have in the past and will change the rules when new people come into office.

All replacement plans make people pay more. Speaker Paul Ryan calls it “more skin in the game.” However, he’s talking about your skin, not his.

While the ACA has problems, they can be fixed.

Congress wants you to forget that Americans making over $200,000 a year will get a 3.8 percent tax cut when it’s repealed — the richest 400 families alone get back $2.8 billion, while the rest of us may not get the treatment we need to live.

We deserve better than this from our elected officials.

Sincerely,

Nancy Hutchens, Bloomington

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