Friend,

House Speaker Mike Johnson has named his agenda for the first 100 days of
the Donald Trump administration. Top of the list? Repealing the Affordable
Care Act.(1)

Unlike Trump’s first term, which was only three years from the full
implementation of the ACA, people’s memories are foggy now. They forget
how insurance companies were allowed to charge women more for their care.
How they were allowed to deny coverage to people with preexisting
conditions. How they had no ceiling for what they charged and no floor for
how little they paid for.

I almost lost my mother because of it.

[ [link removed] ]Will you share your health insurance story and help Courage California
keep the Affordable Care Act in the spotlight?

[ [link removed] ]SHARE YOUR STORY

In late 2012, when my mother was laid off from her job, she was too young
for Medicare, so she enrolled in COBRA coverage through a private
insurance company. Every month, she sent a check for hundreds of dollars
for her premium. But once, she accidentally wrote “18 cents” instead of
“81 cents,” leaving her payment 63 cents short.

Three months later, with no warning and even though she had paid correctly
every month since that point and had no idea she was short once, her
insurance company dropped her for “nonpayment.”

My mother had been diagnosed with diverticulitis, so every insurance
company she tried either wanted thousands of dollars a month or denied her
outright for her “preexisting condition.” She couldn’t afford to pay, so
she went without insurance -- and when she began to experience
complications from her condition, she ignored them because she couldn’t
afford the doctor bills.

Then the ACA was implemented, and she was able to get insurance for $50 a
month. The first thing she did was go to the hospital for her pain, and
she was rushed into emergency surgery. Her surgeon said if she had waited
much longer, she might have died.

[ [link removed] ]Do you have a health insurance story? Share it here!

Since the shooting of the UnitedHealthCare CEO in November, people have
shared thousands of stories about their experiences with that health
insurance company and others like Blue Cross, Cigna, and Aetna. Those
companies have raked in $371 billion in profit in the last decade.(2)

Without the Affordable Care Act, things will get so much worse.

People like my mother will get denied insurance again. College graduates
won’t be able to stay on their parents’ insurance. Expanded Medicaid will
dry up and kick 22 million people off their policies.

So we at Courage California want to collect our members' health insurance
stories, so we can remind our representatives that they can’t rely on
billion-dollar corporations to do the right thing. We need to protect the
Affordable Care Act.

[ [link removed] ]Will you share your story with Courage California and help us stand up
for the Affordable Care Act?

Thank you for being with us.

–Jen, along with Irene, Annie, Angela, Isidra, Cecilia, and Lindsay (the
Courage team)

[ [link removed] ]SUPPORT OUR WORK

Footnotes:
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Courage California (formerly Courage Campaign) makes sure our democracy works for ALL of us by fighting corruption in California politics. We believe the solution lies in exposing and solving systemic problems through strategic organizing, enhancing coordination between progressive organizations, and mobilizing civic engagement from our communities, particularly voters of color, young voters, and self-identified progressives.

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