Organizing for Action

raianxionsin:

Because he knows my struggle. I’m a 20 year old African American male, college student. He knows whats it’s like to struggle. What it’s like to not have everything handed to you. He wasn’t born into money, and yet he lives the American dream. I know the middle class is truly represented under an Obama Administration, and everything Obama has done his first term proves it. I find it hard to believe someone who’s sat on million of dollars like Mitt without ever having to struggle can know what our lives are like.

farfromthepacific:

I’m voting for Obama because he loves me back. 

courtneygoof:

I’ve heard you recently said you don’t know how any young person could vote Democrat. I honestly don’t know how any young person, especially a young woman, could vote Republican. In fact, I am actually a registered Republican who is planning to vote to re-elect President Obama (GASP). I was raised in a conservative, Republican home, so when it came time to register two years ago, I just followed in my family’s footsteps. However, I now plan on giving Obama my full support.

For me, isn’t about party lines or republicans vs. democrats; it’s about the issues that matter to me. As a woman, I just can’t bring myself vote for any candidate that does not acknowledge me as a person. I was raised in a Christian home, but I will advocate for anyone’s right to choose. I’m one of the 98% of women who use birth control. I can’t vote or even seriously consider a candidate who wants to take that away from me.

This will be the first election that I am eligible to vote in. I’m happy to know I stand firmly behind my choice. I’m even happier to know that my choice stands firmly behind me.

-Courtney G

blueinaseaofred:

As a recent college graduate, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to repay and I rely on health insurance from my parents. In addition, I have a uterus that I would like to continue to have control over, why would I vote for anyone other than President Obama?

bitchiamtheswanqueen:

Because I have a uterus, and Obama supports my rights! Also, marshmallow cannons <3

neverbetter-optimist:

I’m voting for Obama because I’m a college student who will enter the workforce in two years, and he is the only candidate in the race that make me feel like he actually cares about what that environment will be like for people like me when I get there.

jlove:

I prefer Obama’s policies on health care, the economy, gay rights, the environment/energy policy, and education, for five. 

erinscafe:

I think there’s probably about 2.5 million young adults who have access to healthcare who *might* feel some inclination to vote for the President who fought for that. Also, just maybe, some young people are happy that they have jobs in the auto industry, or that their parents aren’t unemployed because the same President made the right call there. And again, this is just a theory, there are a lot of young people who are tired of institutionalized bigotry that *might* be happy a certain President repealed DADT. The same young Americans, say, who serve this country in our armed forces, and are no longer risking their lives in Iraq.

Just a thought.

eft47: 

I’m voting for the President because he takes me seriously. I’m twenty-one years old, and I have a voice and a vote and I refuse to be patronized. And even though I don’t have thousands of dollars to donate to his campaign, I know that the President has my back. How great is it that I live in a country where I feel like my President isn’t out to get me? That’s why I’m proud to be an Obama supporter.

This White House correspondent’s report of the President visiting a D.C. bar for a Guinness today is an instant classic:

The president, thwarting any would-be pinchers with a pale moss-green jacket that read “National Parks, America’s Best Idea,” left the White House grounds at 12:46 pm, his motorcade snaking past well-wishers down to the Dubliner and arriving there at 12:59.

A great cheer went up from patrons under a tent on the Dubliner’s sidewalk terrace. Another cheer went up from the drinkers one door down at the Irish Times.

At both spots, revelers adjusted their green schwag (your pooler was especially fond of the Leprecaun-style hats, though the green wigs and beads were nifty as well, while the shamrock face stickers looked like they would be regretted come Sunday morning) and fumbled with their smart phones to snap a photo.

One woman loudly urged the president to “sign my face.” He declined, but spent a few minutes shaking hands outside before walking into the Dubliner, past a sign that read: “He who drinks and knows his pace is always welcome in this place. But he who drinks more than his share is never welcome anywhere.”

In response to the ACA stories we’ve been posting lately, marketfresh submitted:

Reading these over the last few days, I find I’m feeling increasingly fortunate for my good health. No major illnesses or injuries to report—however, three months after I graduated college, I was dropped from my parents’ health insurance and wasn’t offered insurance at my job. I went to school and lived in Massachusetts, but because I was still technically a New York resident I didn’t qualify for MassHealth. I would be covered for emergency room visits only, and even then only up to $2,500.

Thankfully, absolutely nothing happened. Under Obamacare, I’m back on my parents’ insurance and have full coverage, access to a wide range of medical services, and I no longer pay out of pocket for prescriptions.

Every person, well or not, deserves that.

So, sincerely, thank you.

Don’t forget to leave your own ACA story in the submission box.

toomanystarstocount submitted:

I got sick last semester and the doctor’s still aren’t sure what’s going on. I’m in the middle of being diagnosed trying different medications and ideas. Until they figure it out and can start the correct treatment I’ve been spending my days in debilitating pain that makes walking (and sometimes even getting out of bed) hard, unable to sleep, and losing my any ability to keep my focus thanks to brain fog.

Finally, after a lot of discussion with my parents and doctors, I made the agonizing, but necessary, decision to leave college for the rest of the semester. A few weeks ago I moved back home with my parents.

A few years ago I would have lost my health insurance for leaving school. Instead I would have been forced to stay in school and go thousands of dollars into debt just to fail my classes but keep my health insurance or do what was best for my health but have no insurance.

Thanks to President Obama and health care reform I’m at home, trying to get healthy and figure out what’s wrong and I still have the insurance I need to do so.

I am so grateful to him and all of the people in congress working to make sure that everyone in the United States has access to health care.

Wishing you the best and more. Thanks for writing in.

Here’s alexcansmile’s Affordable Care Act story:

I’m engaged to a type 1 diabetic. He’s on two kinds of insulin, which is expensive. Even with insurance, it’s $90 a month for the two insulins and his test strips. Until the President pushed the health care improvements through, we were being faced with triple that each month to pay for insulin. Triple that just so he could live. Then suddenly, he was allowed back on his mother’s insurance. Thanks Obama, you’ve made it so my fiance can actually afford to LIVE.

Have a health care story of your own? Take a second to submit it.

Tim R. wrote in:

Mr. President,

You are using too much “palm” when shooting the basketball. Use your fingertips for more control of spin and accuracy.

In reference to this, we’re guessing. Filing it under “advice.”

sunlit submitted:

When I was 17, I was diagnosed with leukemia. I went through a round of chemo, and it came back so I had a bone marrow transplant. The transplant cured my cancer, but it also caused many complications and side effects, one of which I still deal with today.

One of the drugs I took caused my hip bones to decay. I had my first hip replacement when I was 22. Now my other hip needs to be replaced. I am 24 now, and I work as a freelance graphic designer. Because of this I don’t get benefits, but I am still on my mom’s insurance, thanks to Obamacare. And thanks to Obamacare, I will be able to have my hip replaced without fear of spending thousands of dollars on treatment. Thanks to Obamacare, I will no longer be just a “pre-existing” condition.

Take a sec to submit your health care story.

Nick submitted:

In 2007 my wife, a school teacher, gave birth to two premature girls who were born at 3 lbs a piece, and they required an extensive stay at the hospital. Though we were both working, we are under her insurance. Because she was taking a leave (as is her right), her insurance only covered the first 6 weeks of their hospital stay, and never bothered to inform us that it terminated while they were in the hospital. Of course our insurance company tried to pay as little as possible as I was trying to get COBRA to take over before switching to my insurance.

Needless to say, because bills went unpaid while we were trying to sort things out, we were sent to collections and our pristine credit rating was shattered. Our 2% interest rate for our respective credit cards shot up to over 25%. Because we were carrying debt at the time, as a lot of new parents do, the interest became unsustainable and had to restructure my debt which cost me thousands of dollars.

Though everything was sorted out, the hidden costs of having our credit rating slashed was well above $10,000 while I continue to pay a higher interest on items because of the error.  Not to mention the anxiety of potentially losing my home coupled with the burden of caring for two underweight children was unbearable. And to this day, I still get a bill for as little as 10 dollars and as much as a thousand for the items my insurance company still refuses to pay… FOUR YEARS LATER!

If Obama Care existed in 2007, a very difficult time of my life would have been a lot less stressful, and a lot less expensive.

You really haven’t lived until you received a bill(s) of over 600,000 dollars!

glimpse submitted:

I had just begun my third year of college, transferring to a new university, and I found a lump in my throat. It was visible when I spoke (like an adam’s apple), and it made it hard to swallow. When I went to my local hospital they had me do an ultrasound, four nasal scopes and an ultra-sound guided fine needle aspiration before they would consider removing the nodules they found on my thyroid. These tests alone cost me over $8,000.

I ended up having the surgery at a different hospital and they removed over half of my thyroid. My hospital bill from the surgery and the over night stay was $24,000.

I was twenty, working in retail at about $8.00/hour. I was also going to college full time. My parents had both had surgeries recently (a shoulder surgery for one and carpel tunnel for the other) and so they couldn’t help me financially. I did receive some financial assistance from the larger hospital, but not from my local one.

I opted to continue living with my parents and commute an hour to school everyday in order to save money on rent and groceries, and I have been working three part time jobs while finishing my degree, but it has still taken me three years of diligent saving and timely payments to pay off (officially paid off as of this February!).

There should be a way to make health care more affordable and more available, especially for those who are uninsured AND under-insured. I never want to see others having to do what I had to in order to pay for medical expenses.

Got an ACA story? Share it here.

Bonnie sent in this letter a few weeks ago. It’s a good reminder of what all of this is about.

I am writing this sitting next to my daughter’s hospital bed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Our daughter Leslie is 22 years old. She graduated from Fordham University with double majors in acting and directing last May. She has been living and working in New York and getting some paid acting work while looking for a “survival” job to help pay the rent—nothing very unusual in any of that.

But recently, on the same day she received a job offer from a retail store, Leslie was diagnosed with a non-Hodgkins T-cell type lymphoblastic lymphoma. Cancer. Leslie’s world was turned upside down. All her dreams—the dreams we would like every young person to be able to live out—were either crushed outright or put on indefinite hold. Within 48 hours of diagnosis, Leslie had been admitted here at Sloan, and was receiving chemotherapy.

Her cancer is highly treatable and responds well to chemotherapy. Leslie began her treatment on November 18th. It will be a long road—24 months of active treatment—but there is a good chance that she will be cured. Not a guarantee, but a chance. A chance that we would do anything in our power to give her.

But Leslie turned 23 on January 9th, 2012. Before the Affordable Care Act the President proposed and was able to get passed, Leslie would have lost her health benefits through my employment on that date. And with her diagnosis, before the Affordable Care Act, she would never have been able to buy insurance at any price. The cost of her care is huge; and even though we are fortunate to enjoy a high annual job income, we are basically a middle-class family with a mortgage, and paying for that care personally would bankrupt my husband and me.

Because of the President, our daughter will get the treatment she needs. Because of the President, Leslie gets a chance to save her life. Leslie voted for Barack Obama in 2008, the first national election in which she was eligible to vote. She had no way of knowing then how critical that election would be to her personally; but she believed in Barack Obama then, and she believes in him now, more than ever.

The treatment to cure Leslie’s cancer is harsh and painful. I watch my daughter struggle daily with bone pain, nausea, chills, constipation, hair loss, skin rashes … it is an ugly litany of indignities and varying degrees of discomfort, overlain with the gnawing fear that the chemo won’t work. But each day she struggles on, fighting for the life that she wants to live. And every day we thank Barack Obama for giving her the chance to do so.

In a few months, we have been told that the most intensive and difficult part of Leslie’s treatment will be over.

Our family has made contributions to the President’s campaign efforts ever since he became a national candidate. We have already contributed this year and today made a monthly commitment for the 2012 election. We do that because we think America needs the President. And we do so out of gratitude for our daughter.

Thank you for listening.

Bonnie, Connecticut

More health care stories (submit yours):

S. submitted:

My brother has sleep apnea as well as several other complications. Around the time we were discovering this, my brother had just graduated from college and turned 24, taking him off my parent’s health insurance.

Suddenly we need sleep studies and special medication, doctor’s visits and breathing machines. He couldn’t afford the costs (well over $10,000), and neither could my entire family put together. Then the health care act passed. Suddenly, my brother was back on our federal health insurance, everything was covered. A month later, my brother was well enough to get his own job with his own health insurance. Without it, he would probably have died from complications and lack of treatment.

F. sent in:

When I turned 18, my father told me I would have to pay for my own health insurance because they kick you off at that age. The price was $347.42 per month. Making $8 per hour and just getting a car, there was no way I could afford it and I also didn’t think I needed it.

A week before my 21st birthday, my lungs collapsed. 1 week in the hospital, one surgery later, my bill from the hospital was over $45,000. Wish you were president back then.

thisismyexit submitted:

I’ve had epilepsy since I was 12 years old. When I graduated college in 2009 I was no longer considered a dependent for my dad’s insurance and my coverage was removed. I struggled to pay astronomical insurance fees that would sufficiently cover procedures like MRIs, EEGs, an ambulance (if needed) and my two different medications. Paying this fee and my student loans, I couldn’t afford to get by and had to move back in with my parents.

Because of the Affordable Care act, my dad’s company extended dependent coverage to age 26. I continued to pay insurance fees, but $300 less than I had been paying. Epilepsy isn’t nearly as terrifying as it once was when I knew I’d get a $1200 bill if I needed an ambulance.

awkwardisnotanoption submitted:

Last year, my sister needed to be rushed to the hospital since she was experiencing sharp pains in her abdominal area. The doctors concluded she had appendicitis and needed to have surgery as soon as possible. That evening she had surgery and her appendix was successfully removed. The doctors noted that her appendix was in danger of bursting, and if she hadn’t gone to the hospital, the outcome would have been different.

At that time, she was unemployed and couldn’t afford to pay for her own insurance. She had just recently graduated from college and had student loans she needed to pay. The emergency surgery would have cost her $28,000 since she was uninsured. Fortunately, my parents had added her onto their health insurance thanks to President Obama’s Health Care Reform. Thanks to the President, my sister was able to have emergency surgery without putting her in further debt.