Badass Starfish
- CC
- Apr 3
- 7 min read
What follows is the history of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) also known as ObamaCare, as told by Heather Cox Richardson - March 23, 2025. You can also listen to her podcast on apple podcasts here and on Spotify here.
But First, Context
I never started out my journey as a cancer survivor intending to become an advocate OR the poster child for healthcare insurance! But I humbly accept the role and use the starfish approach!
You remember that story where the young boy is throwing beached starfish back into the ocean and his grandpa comes along and says, "There are so many beached starfish, you may as well give up. There is no way you can save them all." To this the little boy says, "But, it still matters to this ONE!" So, if just one person reads this and gains insight, knowledge, sees a different perspective, or if it helps them, it is worth it! Plus, these topics have become deeply personal to me as a Cancer Survivor who is in jeopardy of losing her healthcare coverage due to the changing policies in this new political landscape. That said, it is not just health insurance that is on the chopping block.
An Update to My Last Post
With the most recent budget bill - the one that just passed to avoid a government shutdown just over a week ago - 57% of cancer research and funding was cut, and that is in addition to the programs and funding that were already axed at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and elsewhere (most recently to studies involving LGBTQ+ people) in an effort to "purge the government of waste and 'unnecessary' spending." Tell the parents who have children with cancer they are unnecessary, I dare you! Personally, I already know people whose clinical trials have been cancelled, leaving them high and dry without a treatment plan. Some of them mid-trial! For some, these trials were not only their only hope of cure but also showed great promise to deliver that cure!
For the record, cancer funding was already a tiny percentage of country's budget - 0.1062% - and CRC funding was already one of the lowest on that list. According to Google AI: "In Fiscal Year 2024, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), received a budget of $7.22 billion, which is a small fraction of the overall US budget of $6.8 trillion."
You may wonder, why is this happening?
Understanding the Thinking
While those of us with emotional intelligence and even those with a scant bit of empathy bemoan and rail against these injustices (not to mention the illegal re-appropriation of our tax dollars), there is something that all of us need to realize. We would have to matter to the so-called powers that be, in order for them to care enough to do things like keep cancer funding in tact, not shred social security (already happening), not destroy medicare and medicaid (also already happening), in general making most American lives more uncertain and unstable. But that's the thing. They don't CARE. Not about you, me or us! To them, we are a financial burden and a national liability and they have twisted the narrative to support that claim. They used the same excuses to deny same-sex marriage rights for decades (BTW - that too, is back on the chopping block thanks to 9 states who are planning to ask the supreme court to revisit.) What it really amounts to is greed. Less funding in areas that help humanity, like cancer research and USAID, allows for bigger tax cuts for the 1%. To them, we are the weak, the sick, and the needy, because bullies don't care about other people. They care only about themselves. And right now, these bullies think they are immune from the ravages of cancer, consequences and conscience. Even while many of us are thriving in our current state of remission, and many cancers are (well, were) preventable, it doesn't negate the fact that in their minds, we are flawed and imperfect, and thus expendable in their new world order. Sound dystopian? Well, it kind of is. But I digress...
The History of Obamacare
This history from Heather Cox Richardson is relevant if you use the ACA for your health insurance. At the time it was created (and now), republican’s disparaged it as “socialized medicine.” Completely False. Socialized medicine in other countries is for the most part, FREE. ACA is by no means free. How do we personally know this? Our healthcare comes from an ACA plan! Why? Because we are between the years of retirement and medicare and that's the only way to get insurance. AND, We pay for it! Others pay for it. Very few do not pay for it. We also pay high deductibles because ACA plans amount to mostly a “major medical” (emergency) plan, if you remember that term from back in the day. Our deductible before coverage is $10,000. That’s the amount you pay out of pocket first before the insurance will pay for anything.
Did you know that Republicans were actually the one’s who first proposed “universal healthcare” in the country? There’s a long history of why that never happened - mostly it comes down to greed, prejudice and racism, but that is a post for another day. Did you know that the USA is the ONLY developed country without universal healthcare? I used to think it was unsustainable because of our size, until I saw this... ⬇️
BTW - If ACA goes away, and you have had ANY pre-existing condition, you will not be able to get coverage from any private insurance provider. AND, lifetime maximums could return. Back in the day these were in the neighborhood of 500k-2M depending on the year and the plan and what that means is that once your medical bills (with and without insurance) tally to that cap, you're done! No more insurance. All it takes is ONE major autoimmune disease, heart disease, or a cancer diagnosis to hit that in a heartbeat.
But here's the thing I really have to wonder...
How many people who use ACA for their insurance voted for this, but didn’t really know they voted for THIS? 🤔 We have a few family members who I think are in that boat (not that they would admit it). There’s still time, if you speak up now!
If you're not familiar with Heather Cox Richardson, we encourage you to get familiar! She is one of the few news sources providing clear, reliable, uncensored, fact-checked daily updates on what is happening in our nation. She is a historian and a professor, so she doesn't use hyperbole or mince words.
In Her Own Words - Heather Cox Richardson
"Fifteen years ago today, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, into law. In addition to making healthcare more affordable, the law eliminated lifetime limits on benefits, prohibits discrimination because of pre-existing conditions, and allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies until they are 26. In 2024, about 24 million people signed up for Obamacare coverage for 2025, while another 21 million adults were covered by the law’s expansion of Medicaid. The ACA has increased the number of Americans covered by health insurance and slowed the rise of health care costs across the board.
Republicans immediately vowed to get rid of the ACA because they object to government regulation of business, provision of a basic social safety net, and promotion of infrastructure. Such a government, Republicans argue, is essentially socialism: it prohibits individuals’ ability to control their businesses without government interference, and it redistributes wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes.
This is a modern-day stance, by the way: it was actually Republican president Theodore Roosevelt who first proposed universal healthcare at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Republican president Dwight Eisenhower who first tried to muscle such a program into being with the help of the new department created under him: the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which in 1979 became the Department of Health and Human Services. Its declared mission was “improving the health, safety, and well-being of America.” In contrast to their forebears, today’s Republicans do not believe the government has such a role to play.
In 2014, Fox News Channel personality Bill O’Reilly explained Republicans' opposition to the law, saying: “Obamacare is a pure income redistribution play. That means President Obama and the Democratic Party want to put as much money into the hands of the poor and less affluent as they can and the healthcare subsidies are a great way to do just that. And of course, the funds for those subsidies are taken from businesses and affluent Americans who have the cash…. Income redistribution is a hallmark of socialism and we, in America, are now moving in that direction. That has angered the Republican Party and many conservative Americans who do not believe our capitalistic system was set up to provide cradle to grave entitlements…. Obamacare is much more than providing medical assets to the poor. It's about capitalism versus socialism.”
In contrast, in 2022, former president Obama explained why the Democrats worked so hard to begin the process of getting healthcare coverage for Americans. “[W]e’re not supposed to do this just to occupy a seat or to hang on to power,” he said. “We’re supposed to do this because it’s making a difference in the lives of the people who sent us here.”
The ACA shows, he said, that “if you are driven by the core idea that, together, we can improve the lives of this generation and the next, and if you’re persistent—if you stay with it and are willing to work through the obstacles and the criticism and continually improve where you fall short, you can make America better—you can have an impact on millions of lives.”
In conclusion, in alignment with the starfish story, for the individuals dependent on ACA for their health insurance, this matters!
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