Dear Congress:

Some voters say they don’t want the government or insurance companies to spend THEIR money on other people’s healthcare.  They think repealing the Affordable Care Act will fix all their healthcare problems.

They probably are not aware that “other people” will likely include them or someone they love at some point.  All of us risk the ravages of accidents, illness, and age, and 39% of US citizens will get cancer in their lifetimes (per the NCI’s current SEER data).

Before the ACA was implemented, cancer was a “pre-existing” condition that prevented anyone who’d had it from obtaining health insurance, and most healthcare plans had “lifetime caps” on how much they would spend on individuals.  My exceptionally great employer-provided health plan’s lifetime cap was $250,000 before the ACA.

My insurance company was billed more than $250,000 during my very first year of advanced lung cancer (I was diagnosed May 2011).

If the lifetime cap and pre-existing conditions clauses were in place last year, I would have lost my health insurance, and likely would have no option to buy more. I would have been responsible for paying about $98,000 in 2016 alone in billed healthcare services and treatments (assuming I could still get my targeted therapy cancer drug free through a clinical trial). That’s despite not having other major health issues last year, like hospitalization for pneumonia or cancer treatment side effects.

I know the ACA is not perfect. I applaud any effort that will improve healthcare coverage in the US.  But repealing the ACA without a suitable replacement is not going to solve our health care crisis.

If you allow pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps to be reinstated, you will be forcing an estimated 14,140,254 cancer patients to choose between bankrupting their families, or foregoing treatment (and probably dying).