Letter to Rodney Davis on the Affordable Care Act

Below is the letter I just sent to my congressman.

I undoubted spent way more time drafting this letter than it was worth. I have no illusions that my congressman will read it and be swayed by my logic. As a practical matter, the best I can hope for is that someone on his staff will look at it carefully enough to add one tick to the column for “constituents opposed to repealing Obamacare.”

And yet, I think it was worth the effort I put into writing it—partially for my own benefit, as a way to clarify what I thought the most important points were, and partially for any local folks who might read it and be moved to weigh in with their own thoughts on the matter.

The Honorable Rodney Davis
1740 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Davis:

I am writing to urge you to preserve three key elements of the Affordable Care Act, which Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” agenda does not protect: that policies cover the full range of essential care, that coverage be available at standard rates regardless of preexisting conditions, and that credits be available to help lower-income people buy health insurance.

With the Affordable Care Act’s rules, it’s possible to buy an insurance police and know that a full range of important care is covered. The “more choices” supported by Speaker Ryan’s plan would mean that people could “chose” to buy insurance with incomplete coverage. I have first-hand experience with how much work it is to analyze and compare insurance policies, trying to read between the lines to see what essential coverage is missing. The result of the Speaker’s plan would be many people who thought they were getting a good deal on their insurance would face bankruptcy because of hidden gaps.

With the Affordable Care Act, the last four years have been wonderfully free of the anxiety that any illness could turn into the “preexisting condition” that would make health insurance unavailable. Speaker Ryan’s plan to condition this on “continuous coverage” is a poor substitute. Sometimes people suffer a financial catastrophe and are temporarily unable to afford to maintain their insurance. It is terribly cruel to compound such a catastrophe with the additional penalty that health insurance—once they can afford it again—be unavailable or unaffordable.

My wife and I have modest incomes, and make some use of the credits available through the Affordable Care Act, which have made my insurance much more affordable. Speaker Ryan’s plan would eliminate these credits and replace them with a single credit which would probably be much smaller—and if as large, would be enormously generous to people with high incomes who scarcely need help affording their health insurance. The current means-tested credits seem much more likely to advance to goal of making health insurance available to everyone.

I urge you preserve these key elements of the Affordable Care Act.

Yours sincerely,

Philip M. Brewer

There are plenty of other things I might have included as well. For example, under the Affordable Care Act an older person can only be charged 3 times as much as a younger person for the same policy, whereas the Speaker’s plan would increase the multiple to 5x. If enacted, that change would cost me a lot. But I thought these were the most essential points: That insurance actually be insurance, that it be available, and that it be affordable.