Washington, D.C. — As President Donald Trump lies that he was “the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare”—while his administration continues to try to use the federal courts to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—the Center for American Progress Action Fund is releasing a new video in its social media campaign to educate the nation on what’s a stake for millions of Americans with preexisting conditions.
The campaign is telling stories of Americans such as Tina Hinchley of Cambridge, Wisconsin, a dairy farmer who was suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor. Thanks to the ACA, Hinchley and her family had insurance through the marketplace, granting her the ability to afford the treatment she needed. Her cancer treatment saved her life and prevented her family’s farm from going under. As Hinchley says in the video, the Trump administration’s hostility toward the ACA and toward protections for people with preexisting conditions jeopardizes not only her health but also her livelihood.
“Out of the blue one day, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And with that, our lives changed. The bills started coming in. It was very, very expensive,” Hinchley says in the video. “Were we going to sell cows? Were we going to sell land? If the Affordable Care Act hadn’t been created, I don’t know what would have happened. We could have lost the farm.”
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Post, the administration has even stalled on plans to write an alternative to the ACA should it be successfully repealed or struck down—a stark contrast to President Trump’s claim that “Republicans only will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.” Hinchley says that broken promise makes her angry, because caught in the middle of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the ACA are people like her and 20 million other Americans who would lose health care coverage—as well as the more than 130 million people who could lose protections for preexisting conditions if these efforts are successful.
“He continually lies for something that is as critical as my health care. To have a president go out in rallies and just say what he thinks people want to hear, it makes me angry,” Hinchley says. “I believe America is better than this, and I believe that we deserve more.”
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