Why I’m fighting to protect the Affordable Care Act
My name is Alice Allen. I am a home health aide, a great grandmother, and a devoted sister. And recently, I have become an activist as well. I’ve joined in protest and even been arrested because the stakes are too high for me to politely sit on the sidelines. I’m fighting for my brother’s life—and the lives
of millions more who could be jeopardized if Donald Trump and Capitol Hill allies like U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt gut the Affordable Care Act.
When my brother was diagnosed with throat cancer, he became uninsurable. It was a struggle to get him the care he needed, and we had to stretch every dollar we had to narrowly avoid bankruptcy. What saved my brother and my family’s finances was the Affordable Care Act. The ACA allowed my brother to get insured by making health care more affordable while preventing big insurance companies from denying my brother care because of his ‘pre-existing condition.’
The ACA has given us—and millions like us— peace of mind, stability, and financial security. And now it’s under attack. President Trump and Republican senators like our own Roy Blunt want to “repeal and replace” the ACA, but so far they don’t seem to have any ideas, much less agreement, about what to replace it with. If they succeed in repealing the ACA without a plan that preserves our healthcare, it will cost 500,000 Missourians like my brother the health insurance they need to survive. It will also cost 48,000 Missouri workers—including 15,000 health care workers like me—the jobs they need to put food on the table.
President Trump and Senator Blunt are playing politics with people’s lives. For me, this is personal. If my brother’s insurance were taken away, it would be a matter of life and death. So I’m treating it like one.
Recently, I made my second trip to Washington, DC to confront Senator Blunt. I joined a sit-in with 46 other protesters in the Capitol building and
refused to leave until Republican leaders told us what their plan for replacing the ACA while preserving our care looked like. I’ve never felt as proud as I did when the Capitol Police clicked the handcuffs around my wrists and hauled me and my fellow protesters off to jail.
Whether it’s in the halls of Capitol Hill or when they come back to big protests at events in their home states, Washington politicians like Sen. Blunt are getting just a taste of the anger boiling in America over their reckless grandstanding about health care. If they’re bent on wrecking the law that has saved our lives and livelihoods, they need to explain to us what they plan to replace it with.
To Senator Blunt, my message is simple: we urge you to consider the human lives at stake in the fight over the Affordable Care Act—and do your part to ensure that all Americans remain insured. Congress must show us a plan to keep everyone covered before voting to take away the healthcare we
count on. The lives of my brother and hundreds of thousands of Missourians are in your hands.
I won’t stop fighting, and I hope my fellow healthcare workers in Missouri and across the country will keep fighting with me.