King County officials and patients tout local benefits of the Affordable Care Act, joining a state and national movement to salvage parts of the law.
Emily Kight, of Seattle, was diagnosed with a rare form of aggressive breast tumor at age 27. Her job didn’t offer health insurance, she said. Then she lost her job.
Had it not been for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which offers insurance to low-income Washington residents, Kight said, care would’ve cost her thousands of dollars and might have left her homeless.
“I can’t help but imagine how things would’ve been catastrophically different without health care,” Kight, now 30 and a teacher, said Monday.
She was one of the patients who joined providers and King County officials in a Seattle news conference touting the ACA’s local importance, adding their voices to a state and national campaign to salvage parts of the law known as Obamacare.
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More than 200,000 King County residents get insurance through the ACA, said King County Executive Dow Constantine. That has helped cut the country’s uninsured rate by half since 2013, to 7.7 percent.
Statewide, some 600,000 residents have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion.
But many stand to lose coverage if Republicans in Congress follow through on vows to repeal parts of the ACA, such as Medicaid expansion and subsidies to individuals who enroll in coverage through the state insurance exchange.
“People’s health, really people’s lives, are in the balance,” Constantine said. He predicted that without the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and other components, costs to the health-care system and community would increase.
He was joined by Patty Hayes, the county’s top public-health official, and Joe McDermott, chairman of the Metropolitan King County Council, in imploring Congress not to gut the ACA.
Though deep-blue King County may not have much sway with Republicans in Congress and President Trump, Constantine said the county officials and lobbyists will continue to make their case.
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that Trump aimed to give states fixed amounts of federal money in block grants to provide health care to people on Medicaid.
That raises questions whether state allotments will be adjusted for population growth, inflation and increases in prices of medical services and new drugs.
Gov. Jay Inslee stated his opposition to Medicaid block grants in a letter to Congressional leaders last month.
Other governors, including Charlie Baker, a Republican from Massachusetts, expressed concerns about block grants in a New York Times story. Baker said states would more likely then base decisions on “mainly on fiscal reasons than the health-care needs of vulnerable populations.”