Worries About Health Insurance Cross Political Boundaries
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
About 20 million Americans have insurance through the ACA, and it's unclear how their coverage could change if Donald Trump succeeds in dismantling it. Two of our member station reporters - Lauren Silverman and Durrie Bouscaren - ask patients in their states about their experiences with the law. First, here's Lauren Silverman in Dallas.
LAUREN SILVERMAN, BYLINE: Clutching a cup of coffee on a break at work, Leigh Kvetko says she feels a double duty to stay healthy for herself and for the teenage girl whose death gave her new life with a donated pancreas and kidney.
LEIGH KVETKO: I am so grateful, and I try to show that by taking care of myself. I'm only here because of her and her family's sacrifice.
SILVERMAN: To stay healthy, Kvetko has to take 10 medications twice a day. Several of the pills she takes cost nearly $1,000 each a month. For years, Kvetko stuck with a corporate job in Austin in large part because it offered health insurance. When the Affordable Care Act passed, insurers could no longer discriminate against people like Kvetko who have preexisting conditions. And she and her husband finally felt free.
KVETKO: It actually gave me hope, and we decided to sell our house to downsize, to start our own businesses and just to start a new chapter of our lives.
SILVERMAN: In this new chapter, Kvetko is retail manager at a busy Dallas coffee shop. She struts through the store in cowboy boots, her long, red hair framing green-speckled eyes. She looks happy and healthy.
KVETKO: The fact that they cannot discriminate against me because of how I was born was a lifesaver.
SILVERMAN: But her pancreas is failing, and she's terrified a President Trump would dismantle the Affordable Care Act. He's said he wants to keep protection for people with preexisting conditions like Kvetko, but he also wants to repeal the mandate that everyone buys coverage. Insurers say that will make costs skyrocket. To Kvetko, that doesn't seem fair.
KVETKO: I've paid my taxes since I've been 15 years old. I've been working since I've been 15 years old, and I am allowed to have a good life. I work for it.
SILVERMAN: For NPR News, I'm Lauren Silverman in Dallas.
DURRIE BOUSCAREN, BYLINE: And I'm Durrie Bouscaren in St. Louis. If you ask Mike Cluck, the Affordable Care Act is not working for people like him. Cluck and his wife, Nancy, live in Edwardsville, Ill., a small town northeast of St. Louis. He sells casualty and life insurance, but because he's self-employed, he's always had to purchase health coverage on his own. In 2015, he bought a plan on healthcare.gov.
MIKE CLUCK: Which actually saved us $300 a month, and we were really happy with it.
BOUSCAREN: But this year, two companies dropped out of the health insurance exchange in this part of Illinois, leaving just one - Blue Cross Blue Shield. Cluck says the premiums were fine, and deductibles weren't too bad.
CLUCK: But the problem was they would not cover any doctors or hospital stays on the Missouri side of the river.
BOUSCAREN: Like most insurers, Blue Cross assigns in-network and out-of-network doctors to each plan as a way to keep costs down. Last year when he had his old plan, Cluck was diagnosed with prostate cancer. After surgeries, radiation and a second mortgage to pay for out-of-pocket costs, he's now cancer free, but all of his doctors are based in St. Louis. And now the insurance company's directory shows they'll be out of network.
CLUCK: What happens six, seven years down the road and my cancer comes back? You have the best of the best who took care of me once over in St. Louis.
BOUSCAREN: To Cluck, the law seems like a bunch of broken promises.
CLUCK: This was not supposed to happen. We were promised we could keep our doctors. We were promised it would cost $2,500 less than what we were currently paying, and nothing has come true.
BOUSCAREN: On November 8, he voted for Donald Trump.
CLUCK: For a lot of reasons, not just Obamacare.
BOUSCAREN: Cluck says he hopes Trump changes the law for the better.
CLUCK: Fixing, dismantling, however you want to call it - I think that needs to really be a priority.
BOUSCAREN: Details of the new administration's health care plan haven't yet been released. For NPR News, I'm Durrie Bouscaren in St. Louis.
CORNISH: And this story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, local member stations and Kaiser Health News.
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