Obamacare improves access

My husband works for Community Health Association of Spokane clinic. He saw a man with prolonged bloody diarrhea, weight loss and intestinal pain. This man is a parent, one of the working poor, employed at a fast-food restaurant.

CHAS clinic will see any patient, regardless of ability to pay. The specialist needed to help this man will not. His only chance at seeing a specialist, under the current health care system, is to quit his job, sink further into poverty and apply to Project Access, and cross his fingers. He has children to feed.

Is this what the Republicans are fighting so hard to maintain? Is this their idea of rugged individualism, to stop working and go into poverty to receive health care? What’s their record on a living wage to help this man afford his own insurance?

Under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, he will qualify for Medicaid, which he currently does not. My hope is that this uninsured man can hold out until January, a reality for millions of Americans.

Republicans make stands and pick ideological fights amazingly well. But can they compromise for the greater good? It’s hard to stomach, and I’m healthy. Let Obamacare go forward and improve health care access.

Nikki Otero Lockwood

Spokane