Nowhere else do Americans need as much help with health insurance as in West Virginia, but they still want to get rid of Obamacare. A visit.
–
At first Mina Schultz only hurt her knee. That was six years ago, Schultz was 25. When the pain didn’t go away, she went to the clinic. “I remember when I was done with the X-ray I asked the doctor for fun if he found anything bad. He said: Be glad you came here.” It was bone cancer. But the disease was curable. Today Mina is 31 and only needs to be checked once a year.
Schultz was lucky. She went to the doctor early, the cancer was discovered and treated in time. Most of all, she had health insurance. If Mina Schultz, who had German ancestors, lived in Altötting or Vechta, it would not be worth mentioning. But she lives in Fairmont, a small, run-down industrial town on the Monongahela River in West Virginia. Many people here are unemployed and poor. And even if they have work, they can make ends meet.
The median household income in West Virginia is $ 42,000 a year, gross. Of this, a family has to pay for food and the installments for the house and gasoline and new tires for the car, because you can’t get to work without a car, and then it looks bad. Who can afford health insurance that eats away half a thousand or more every month?
OP costs as much as a house
At least, that was before President Barack Obama pushed through the healthcare reform that was named after him in 2010. Obamacare The aim was to provide people who could not take out health insurance on their own because they were too poor or sick to get affordable, sensible policies with the help of the state. The blessing of the reform can be seen in Mina Schultz. “My knee surgery cost as much as my parents’ house is worth, my first chemotherapy as much as my mother’s annual salary,” she says. Thanks to Obamacare, the family was able to pay for the treatment without going bankrupt.
According to the will of the Republicans and President Donald Trump, Obamacare should not be around for long. Trump failed on Friday with his plans. He has not been able to gather enough Republicans behind his replacement law. The planned vote was canceled.
According to a serious forecast, 24 million people could lose their health insurance in the next ten years – four million people morethan received insurance from Obamacare. The rate of uninsured people in America, which has fallen from 16 to 8 percent as a result of Obamacare in the past six years, would rise again dramatically.
West Virginia would need good health care
West Virginia is one of the US states that would be particularly hard hit. He is bitterly poor, the coal mining jobs that used to bring money and a good middle-class life have disappeared. People suffer from typical poverty-related diseases – rotten teeth, overweight, diabetes, depression. “Suffering from despair” is said, and that sounds much more poetic than it is.
The opioid epidemic has devastated entire areas for several years. AIDS and hepatitis spread quickly. Many former miners have broken bones or dust. Almost everywhere in America, people are getting healthier and longer. Only in West Virginia do they get sicker and die earlier.
So if there is one state that needs good health care, it is West Virginia. And Obamacare has significantly improved the situation. Nearly 200,000 people in West Virginia currently have Obamacare health insurance – either because the US government subsidizes their premiums, or because they join existing state insurance for the poor (Medicaid) were recorded. That is a good ten percent of the population. Most of these people were previously uninsured or had ineligible policies. “Obamacare was a real godsend for us,” says social worker Stacy North. “If we lost Obamacare, it would be an incredible disaster.”
–
