With Democrats presently enjoying a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans don’t have the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare, via Congress. But now that the GOP-sponsored lawsuit Texas v. Azar — which argues that the ACA in its entirety should be struck down as unconstitutional — is making its way through the courts, Republicans might not need Congress to abolish Obamacare. And a Republican who has voted seven times to repeal the ACA, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, came to face to face with one of the potential victims of ACA repeal at a recent town hall in his state.
If the ACA was overturned without anything to replace it, millions of Americans would lose their health insurance — including those with pre-existing conditions, which could be anything from diabetes to asthma to heart disease to sleep apnea to acid reflux to skin cancer. An Iowa woman at the town hall asked Grassley what his plan was to cover “those of us with pre-existing conditions” who “need life-guaranteeing medication” were the ACA to be abolished.
The woman told Grassley, “We could lose our insurance, and I’d probably be dead in two months.” Grassley stammered, saying that he didn’t think the courts would declare the ACA unconstitutional.
The woman reiterated, “I would be dead in 60 days or less without the Affordable Care Act,” and Grassley mumbled that there’s “no question about keeping pre-existing conditions.” The Iowa senator noted that there was no chance of the ACA being repealed in the House in 2019, asking the woman, “So what are you worried about?”
Indignantly, she told Grassley, “You’re threatening my life.”
The day after the town hall, the Iowa woman posted a video online, saying that she was “still waiting for the answer” from Grassley on how Americans with pre-existing conditions such as herself would be covered were the ACA to end.
Watch the video here:
