The Stories team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund works with storytellers who author op-eds about how policy impacts their lives. The team helps elevate their op-eds.
My entire life has depended on access to healthcare. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, finding affordable and quality healthcare was difficult, and when it was found it was expensive. When I was 12, I accidentally cut my hand open and I was crying not out of pain but because I knew it would cost a lot of money. I knew how the necessary care would impact my family financially.
I was born with multiple health conditions, otherwise known as “pre-existing conditions” by insurance companies. Without the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I’d be bankrupt. The ACA allowed me to stay on my parents’ insurance and become the first in my family to graduate from college, giving me a pathway out of the economic conditions I was born into.
The above excerpt was originally published in UpNorthNews.
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