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While roughly 83% of adults in the United States will visit a health care provider in the next year, an estimated
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Letter From ACS CAN Nebraska Volunteer on Access to Care In Lincoln Journal Star
February 27, 2017
Before the Affordable Care Act, accessing health coverage could be like playing Russian roulette for cancer patients. Insurance companies could cancel a patient’s existing coverage when they got sick or deny coverage in the first place because of a pre-existing condition. If you reached a lifetime or annual limit, your care could be cut off.
Yes, the ACA needs improvements, but repealing the law wholesale without a simultaneous and comprehensive replacement plan would be devastating to the millions of cancer patients who rely on it. We simply can’t afford to go back.
One proposal being considered is to keep the ban on pre-existing condition discrimination only if a person has maintained continuous coverage but cancer patients who can't work or lose their job and experience gaps in coverage could be locked out of the insurance market indefinitely, just like what happened before the ACA.
Cancer patients can’t face the possibility of not being able to purchase coverage. Let’s not play politics with people’s health. I’m asking Congress to compromise on improvements to the existing law. Don’t repeal what’s working and send us back to uncertainty without assurances that your replacement is as good or better than what we have now.