LTTE by Louisiana physician -- Please, Sens. Cassidy and Kennedy: save Obamacare

Our Louisiana senators, Dr. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, have an enormously important decision ahead of them this week. They have to decide whether they are going to vote to take health insurance coverage away from hundreds of thousands of their constituents.

They have to figure out if they want to rip Medicaid expansion away from the 23,600 people in Caddo Parish who have gained coverage in the last year, some for the first time in their adult lives.

Our senators also have to decide if they want to eliminate $8 billion in federal funds coming to Louisiana that support health care providers, including hospitals like LSU, physicians and clinics. They have to choose if they want to eliminate the jobs of 21,000 Louisianans, including 13,500 in the healthcare sector.

I am a wife, mother and licensed physician. This bill gives our state the option to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act.

With this option, as a woman, I become my own preexisting condition again. My husband and I cannot keep our daughter under our health insurance until she is 26. My husband has enough preexisting conditions that could raise our premiums or, worse, cost him our insurance. My husband is a licensed HIV specialist in the Shreveport/Bossier area. This repeal will negatively impact access to life-saving treatment to many of his patients.

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Dr. Eileen Velez

Shreveport

Read more: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/2017/06/26/please-sens-cassidy-and-kennedy-save-obamacare/428288001/