Joni Ernst: Support the Affordable Care Act in Iowa

The U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world, and until the Affordable Care Act, millions of working class Americans couldn't afford health insurance, yet didn't qualify for medicaid. To repeal the Affordable Care Act will doom working class Iowas to financial catastrophes if they no longer can afford health insurance or are removed from Iowa's medicaid program. This will cost at least some of these Iowans their lives as they put off needed medical care, and reduce their use of necessary prescription drugs to ineffective levels. In addition, the inability to take advantage of lower cost preventive and early intervention care means more medical care gets provided when medical conditions become severe and initial treatment occurs in emergency rooms. That's going to increase costs for all of us as hospitals try to cover losses that occur when people simply can't pay. To repeal the Affordable Care act will also cost families of young adults (18-27) significantly more in terms of assuring their children have health insurance coverage. Repeal is, quite simply, a very bad idea, unless we replace the act with a single payer plan such as exists in almost every other industrialized nation in the world where, by the way, health care is also much, much less expensive.