Washington, D.C. — As President Donald Trump lies that his administration “saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare”—even as his administration continues to try to use the federal courts to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during a global health pandemic—the Center for American Progress Action Fund is releasing a new video in its social media campaign to educate the nation on what’s at stake for millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. If the 20 state plaintiffs are successful in this lawsuit, it will be cataclysmic for the response to the pandemic.
The campaign is telling stories of Americans such as Chris and Angie Pyle, who operate a family-owned coffee shop in Southeast Ohio. For Chris and Angie, operating a small business for the past 17 years has had its challenges—particularly pertaining to health care, as they both have preexisting conditions. As Pyle says in the video, the ACA helped keep their small business from going under, and given the Trump administration’s hostility toward the ACA and protections for people with preexisting conditions, Pyle worries that their health and family business may be at risk.
“Before the ACA, we didn’t have insurance,” he says. “We were having incredible chronic pain issues. We applied to countless insurance programs, and every single one, we were not accepted because of preexisting conditions, and without the ACA, we could have lost the shop.”
Last year, the Trump administration backed a 20-state lawsuit seeking to overturn the entire ACA in the courts after making dozens of failed attempts to repeal the law and protections for preexisting conditions. According to The Washington Post, the administration has even stalled on plans to write an alternative to the ACA should it be successfully repealed or struck down—despite President Trump’s claim that “Republicans only will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.”
“President Trump, he said he’s going to have a plan. I don’t know when he’ll ever reveal the secret plan, but it’s our lives that he’s dealing with,” Pyle says in the video. He later says that, “Those protections in the ACA are incredibly important. He’s [Trump] trying to dismantle that, but he says that he’s not.”
If the Trump administration’s efforts are successful, 20 million Americans will be stripped of their health coverage and another 135 million people would lose their protections for preexisting conditions.
“For the moment, I’m still protected and that’s great to know, that gives me a lot of hope for the future. I can’t imagine not having the insurance and the protections that come with the ACA; it’s such a help to our family,” says Pyle.
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