My presidential endorsement with reference to 3 fictional characters (Part 1 of 3)

Walter White for Hillary

         I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton because of Walter White.

         Yes, Walter White, the Chemistry Teacher who gets cancer, can’t pay his medical bills, and breaks bad by selling meth, becomes the drug king “Heisenberg” and ruins the lives of almost everyone he loves in the process.

My Own Experience

         I have a pre-existing condition, Pulmonary Atresia with VSD (a heart condition). This means, before the Affordable Care Act was law insurance companies would do everything that could to not pay for my medical expenses. For example, while I was on internship I had a check-up and found out my insurance company at the time refused to pay for anything that involved my heart, and cast the widest net possible in defining what involved my heart. I actually had to enlist Governor Martin O’Malley and the Attorney General to help me fight for basic healthcare!

         So, in my experience, without the Affordable Care Act, a basic check-up that is required for someone with my condition costs over $10,000 and I have to pull every trick I know how to do, and figure out some I don’t, just to make sure the free market doesn’t swallow me whole. After the passage of the ACA it costs $2-4,000.

         When (not if) my valve will need replacement under the ACA it will be very difficult to pay off my medical expenses, but with hard work and perseverance I’ll get it done. If my valve needs replacement, and the ACA is not in place, I won’t be able to pay my medical bills.

This shapes the lives of over fifty million Americans

         This is not a position unique to me. 57,200,000 Americans have a pre-existing condition. Before the ACA insurance companies could in a variety of ways, choose not to cover us or punish us for our pre-existing conditions. To be clear, many pre-existing conditions are not as extreme as mine, for example acne, asthma, diabetes, and high cholesterol. At the same time, imagine an insurance company using your pimples as an excuse to not pay for treating any part of your body that has skin on it!

         So, for me, and many like me, where the two candidates fall on the ACA is incredibly important.

Donald Trump’s Position

         Donald Trump’s position on the ACA is all over the map. In fact, he’s redone his official position page since this morning. He’s claimed that he loves a socialist system like Scotland, that he’ll protect people with Pre-existing conditions, that he’ll repeal the ACA and not replace it with anything.

         Then there is the current position on his website (again, different than the one I read this morning). Look carefully at his official position (if you can, the page keeps changing). He’ll repeal the ACA on day one. Then he says he’ll replace the ACA, but makes no mention of Pre-existing conditions. He continually focuses on the free market and unleashing the power of business to provide goods and services. In my experience, businesses are happy to use their power to deny goods and services when it comes to paying for healthcare of people with pre-existing conditions.

Hillary Clinton’s Position

         Unlike Donald Trump’s position on the ACA, Hillary is clear, she’ll keeps laws in place to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Additionally, she’s been consistently fighting to provide healthcare for all since the Children’s Health Insurance Program back in the ‘90’s.

The Choice

         I know some people I’ve talked to think it is really bad to be a “one issue voter.” In fact, they seem to think my opinion on who should be president doesn’t count because I have real skin in the game, that one particular policy will shape my life in a big way, so I can’t be objective. I’d love to be objective! I’d love to make this decision looking down on it all, like Gloucester on the cliff in King Lear, or to treat elections like some game or game show, like it is Dancing with the Stars or a way to express my particular cultural and social location.

         But I don’t have that privilege.

         If Hillary is elected I spend 10% or less of my income on check-ups, and when my valve goes I struggle financially for a year, but stay afloat.

         If Trump is elected I spend 25% of my income on check-ups and call in favors, and when my heart valve goes I die, go bankrupt, or break bad.

         So, for the sake of all of us with pre-existing conditions, please give Hillary Clinton a second look.

Next up, Pedro.

The Pre-existing Condition Swing Vote?

I saw this Obama ad today—and being a man with a heart condition and defined as having a pre-existing condition—I was moved by it.
So, that got me thinking… how many people are there with pre-existing conditions in the USA?
I googled it and came up with 57.2 Million.
131.3 million people voted in 2008.
People with pre-existing conditions make up 43.6% of the electorate (assuming of course we are all old enough to vote).
That means an elected official, protecting the rights of people with pre-existing conditions against a candidate who wishes to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, would only need to get 8.45 million people without pre-existing conditions--or 7.4% of the electorate-- to vote for them if all of us with pre-existing conditions voted for them.
That’s one hell of a swing vote!
Just sayin’.

My letter to Rep. Pallone

Dear Rep. Pallone

            I am a 33 year old man with Pulmonary Atresia with Ventricular Septal Defect. I am one of the first people to survive this condition passed age 3 or so. In fact, I’ve been told it is the audio of my heart that medical students listen to in order to know what we sound like.

            I am writing this to you as a letter of encouragement, please continue to stand for the 57 million Americans with pre-existing conditions and all those who need good laws in order to have good healthcare.

            I’ve been blessed, I was covered under good insurance as a kid, because my mom worked for the Department of Defense, the VA, and NATO and they made sure my pre-existing condition was covered. Now days, I am a Lutheran Pastor and I have insurance through the Church, I’m happy with it, and because it is a national plan connected with a national Church, it will follow me from congregation to congregation. But, I know not everyone with a pre-existing condition can be a Lutheran Pastor.

            On top of that, there was a period of time during seminary, before the ACA was passed, when I was covered by inferior insurance. I’d been told, when purchasing the insurance, that my heart condition was covered (they wanted to sell me the policy, right?), but when I went for my every-other-year heart check-up I received a $10,000 bill, nothing covered because everything to do with my heart was “pre-existing.” $10,000 was 80% of my income that year (I was a Vicar at an inner-city church in Baltimore). I had to plead poverty once I found out my insurance company would not cover it.

            It is a painful and embarrassing thing to skip out of paying what you owe. Everyone in the hospital was gracious once it was clear what had happened and that I wasn’t trying to pull one over on anyone, so it sort of worked out that time.

            But, these days, I only pay 10% of my income for health insurance as Pastor of St. Stephen here in New Jersey, because I have good insurance. I am happy to pay my fair share, and so glad that no one discriminates against me based on this condition I was born with.

            I have to admit, I am deeply afraid for my fellow pre-existing condition folk, that this protection will be taken away if the ACA is repealed. I hear Trump’s point person plans to replace the ACA with a non-taxable savings account and the ability to transfer insurance across state lines. Neither of these will do anything for the 57 million of us with pre-existing conditions. Maybe it is just my Lutheran sense of Sin with a capital S, but I am damn sure if companies are given back the right to discriminate, they will.

            Please understand me, I want to pay my fair share. I want to do right by my doctors who keep me alive. The ACA gives folk the possibility to do that—the alternative doesn’t.

            Again, thank you so much for fighting for me and the 57 million.

Peace,

Chris Halverson

I Was Not Wrong

You might remember that I endorsed Hillary Clinton and warned about the dangers of electing Donald Trump.

I suggested he’d endanger people with pre-existing conditions, that there was no there there—his ideas were basically empty slogans, and that he had authoritarian tendencies.

Six months later, I think we can assess my worries about Trump. 

At this point I think I can safely say I was not wrong.

Pre-existing conditions

            The Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land, though there are plenty of ways Trump is undermining it, including pulling ads and use of executive orders. That said, he’d initially said Trumpcare would protect people with pre-existing conditions, until he got down to the final hour before the bill was going to go for a vote, and gladly cut up that part of the bill before the whole thing failed. There is now a new effort to repeal the ACA and cut people with pre-existing conditions off at the knees. So, yeah, I was not wrong.

Empty Slogans

            When Trump was trying to tackle healthcare he admitted, “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.” This after claiming he’d create a perfect plan that kept all the things people liked about the ACA, but it would be tons cheaper. “A terrific plan that would cover everyone.” Yes, he’s governing by slogan not idea.

            As further evidence, he’d promised, as you might remember, to get China to invade North Korea for us, now he’s planning on “solving” North Korea without China.

            He had a secret plan to defeat ISIS, it looks more like he’s just letting the Obama plan chug along, maybe with more civilian casualties and botched raids.

            He was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. They won’t.

            He promised to ban Muslims, which has proved to be unconstitutional and judges have blocked said executive order twice.

            You get the picture, he says things, but they don’t seem to work as actual policy, so he backtracks. I was not wrong.

Authoritarianism

            I was a NATO kid and was on a NATO base when the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place. I was told in no uncertain terms that was what we were fighting against—America while deeply imperfect, stands for human rights, and when we fail that we are held to account for it, because that is who we are. Yeah, naïve right, but still, damn it, if I have a choice between someone who stands up to China and says, “Women’s rights are human rights!” or someone who thinks what happened at Tiananmen Square shows strength, I’m going with Human Rights every time.

            Off my soap box.

            So far, Trump and his people have proved to be very cozy with Vladimir Putin. In fact, he’s defended Putin killing journalists and employed a moral equivalency between America and Russia to defending Putin being a killer.

            Additionally, he’s given Egyptian Strongman Al-Sisi legitimacy and a boatload of cash, green lighting his human rights abuses. In general, Middle Eastern dictators are loving this.

            So far he’s ruling via executive orders, with 23 so far (vs 18 for Obama at this time). And when these orders don’t go as planned we’re told to not question his authority. Those who do their job and interpret the constitutionality of the orders are dismissed as “so called judges.” He is threatening fellow Republicans like he’s “The Godfather.” Also, he capriciously knocked a billion dollars off an American company’s stock via Twitter.

            As for the hate crimes, it’s so bad the Lutherans are doing active bystander training. And before you think we’re over-reacting, the night before the first training a young woman was spat upon for wearing a hijab and the day after I visited a local Islamic Center, it was targeted. On a more terrifying scale an Indian man was killed in Kansas because he looked Muslim. Then there is White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s obsession with “The Camp of the Saints” in which immigrants from the 2/3rds world and hippie leftists are eventually slaughtered to save the West.

            So, it seems Trump is emboldening human rights violators abroad and racists at home and governing in a heavy-handed manner. I was not wrong.