There are very serious questions that we should be asking. As a resident of Massachusetts, I haven’t experienced any negative impacts on my daily life from ACA. I notice that I don’t have co-pays anymore for visits and no, I’m not on a Medicaid program. We pay for our insurance through my husband’s work. Our premiums have not skyrocketed to a point where we can’t afford it. Maybe it is because Massachusetts along with ACA that makes healthcare something that I don’t really have to worry about. But I do have questions that should be answered.

1. Currently under Obamacare, health insurance companies are required to provide dental insurance to minors. Does this stay with Trump care? This is a question that should be answered because there are families that cannot afford separate dental insurance. I am fortunate enough because we also get dental insurance through my husband’s work but this still makes things easier on us. For instance when my oldest son needed more sealants, we were going to have to pay $200 after our dental insurance. However, that money was paid for by the dental insurance through our health insurance. That extra money matters when you are in that middle class limbo where you don’t get free things or extra tax breaks.
2. Can we safely assume that birth control is no longer free? There are some people who actually require this for health purposes. If you are going to close down Planned Parenthood which offers affordable options and don’t have plans to make these medications more affordable, then this is a problem that needs to be addressed.
3. What happens if you lose your job? Instead of a mandate for those who refuse to buy insurance, they are going to to punish people who lapse in insurance. The problem is what happens if you lose your job and you lose your insurance along with it? You have no job so you can’t buy private insurance and they are really going to make it more difficult to get Medicaid. Then when you finally do get a job, you’ll have to pay 30% more for it. This seems like a tax on the less fortunate population.
4. What about co-pays? Right now you don’t have to pay co-pays for preventative care. This means that you are not going to pay $25 a pop for your physicals which may give some the incentive to actually go. I know I go to my regular checkups more that I don’t have to worry about paying for it. This means a healthier population. I do believe this also counts for pregnancy, saving women at least $200 that they will not have to worry about when it comes time for their hospital stay that will cost in the $10,000s.

These are only a few of the questions that I have about this new plan that no one seems interested in mentioning. There is a big problem with healthcare that no one seems to want to directly address: the costs. I have no heard any plan that says “yes, paying $200 for a pill of Ambien while you are in the hospital is ridiculous”. What about the big mess with insulin meds or the Epi-Pen? Maybe we should mistrust politicians since they don’t want to fix the problem because then they won’t get their payoffs for helping these big companies profit off of the people who can least afford it.