In Defense of the Affordable Care Act.

I spoke a few weeks ago at the ACA rally here in Anchorage.

Below is an edited version of some of my reasons for supporting the ACA.

My name is Jeanna Duryee. I am a veteran of the US Army where I honorably served during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I went to school using the GI Bill, scholarships, and Student loans. I graduated from the University of Southern California in 2001 with my doctorate in Physical Therapy. I have been living and working in Alaska as a Physical Therapist since 2002.
I own an outpatient PT clinic. That means I treat people who need PT, but are not sick or disabled enough to be hospitalized or stuck in their home. I treat Alaskans from five years old, to 95 years old: People who have had accidents falling on the ice, in car accidents, or are hurt on the job. I work with people who have diseases that limit their capacity to move, work, and care for themselves or others. It is a very good job.
Many offices do not take Medicaid and Medicare patients. I do, because it is the right thing to do. Since I accept Medicaid, when many don’t, close to 50% of my patients are Medicaid clients. I want to tell you who those people are. I want to discuss the false narrative of the “welfare mom,” or lazy people who are working the system. I want you to know who will be losing coverage with the current plans to replace the ACA.

• I have many single parents that are working two jobs, neither job provides health care. They rely on medicaid for themselves and their children. I see injuries and pain that make it hard to get up every day and take care of themselves, let alone work 40+ hours a week. They just want to feed their families. 
• I have a client who worked as a CNA in a nursing home for 20 years, which is back breaking work. She didn’t retire with a benefits package, is too young for Medicare, but her body is broken.
• I have a patient who is in her mid forties who has been a PCA for 20 years, and her body is starting to give out. She works full time, has 3 kids, and goes to school 16 hours a week. She and her kids are on Medicaid.
• I have a client who worked 15 years as a fire jumper, and had to retire to an unrelated disease, and cumulatively, his body is broken. He is too young for Medicare, and broken.
• I have seen many who were injured on the job who are to loyal to their owners or to proud to file a worker’s comp claim. They are disabled, in pain, and can't get better to be able to find other work without medical care.
• There are many tradesmen in our state that are on Medicaid. If you aren't lucky enough to have a union job or work for the state, you have usually have no benefits. Most plumbers, electricians, and construction workers have no health care. 
• I even have had union patients who have paid me out of their own pockets or with barter, because they didn’t have coverage because of injuries incurred in between their contract work. 

Many business owners say, "laborers are like trucks, you run them till they die, then you get a new one."
Well, when the laborers “die” or when their bodies are too broke to work anymore, they have a lot of life left in them. Think about it. If you started work at 20, and you are "lucky" to work 25 years, that makes you 45 years old. That is 20 years out from qualifying for medicare. You might be able to find a low wage part time job to help you feed your family, but those jobs don't offer insurance either.
These are Alaskans in heart and spirit. They are Americans. They are hard working and proud. They do not deserve to be abandoned to sit crippled in their homes and rot, while their families fall into poverty. They deserve to be seen and treated. They deserve our respect, they deserve our protection, they deserve health care. These are Alaskans I am proud to call my friends and neighbors.

People who have health care because they have a full time job with benefits are not any better people than the people on Medicaid. They are not any more deserving of mobility and pain relief. Our brothers and sisters who are on Medicaid need their coverage desperately, because it is part of a fragile network that allows them to work and feed their families.

The ACA as bogeyman is a false narrative. It has been a talking point target demonized. It is a rallying cry. It was almost a mob-mentality the last 4 years in congress trying to take it down. It has faults, but those can be amended. You don’t have to blow up a bridge if you don’t like it’s structure.  Blowing up a bridge might feel good. But to blow up a bridge while people are crossing, trying to save their lives, Who does that? It is ugly, and vengeful.

We can fix the ACA. It is the right thing to do. Our Alaskan brothers and sisters deserve better than what is being offered by congress now, which will affect all of us. There are arbitrary caps on care, funding slashed, countless Alaskans will be plain and simply cut off the roles. There safety net from falling into abject poverty and homelessness will be gone.
You aren't safe from harm if you have insurance already. In Alaska each filer will loose an average of $10,000 in tax credits. This is twice what the next state's citizens would loose at $5,000.

Americans and Alaskans, our brothers and sisters, all of us deserve better. They ACA can and should be amended. We don’t have to blow up the bridges. We don’t have to destroy our people, and cannibalize each other. There is money out there, we just need to decide what our priorities are.

Please let us amend the ACA, and make a health care system that is not rated last in the industrialized nations. Let's make health care a right, not a privilege. Lets continue to work for Liberty and Justice, for All.