My Letter to Politicians on the Affordable Care Act

Well hello. 

There are lots of interesting things going on in the government right now. I'll be the first to say that I don't understand a lot of what the government does, but I am trying to learn. Since some stuff is about to hit the fan, I thought I'd post the letter I wrote and sent to my Congressman and both Senators. I'm not doing this to start a fight or anything, just to explain how my life has been affected by by the Affordable Care Act. I don't think it is all horrible, but I do think it needs to be looked at again and changed in many ways. 

 I really am proud to be an American and able to communicate with politicians and have a chance to be involved in the political process as much as I choose to be. So this is me being an adult and writing letters to my local political leaders. Go democracy :)

Dear Congressman Chaffetz (and also sent to both senators),

I am writing in regards to my experience with the Affordable Care Act. My background can help you understand why this is so frustrating to me. As a college student I didn’t pay much attention to politics; everyone involved seemed like a bunch of fighting teenagers. While I was away in Nebraska for 18 months as a volunteer for my church, this particular act was made a law. After I came back I still didn’t pay much attention to politics and focused on my education. Since I was studying Psychology, my plans included going to graduate school to obtain a Masters so I could get a job that paid decently and would allow me to help people.  I have been assured since junior high that if I attended college and worked hard to obtain a degree, I would be able to pay for the things I needed and raise a family with a modest lifestyle. I want to emphasize that I am not opposed to paying back my student loans. I am not opposed to hard work. I think it is a privilege to live in a country where I can pay taxes to improve my community and help people. What I am opposed to is being taken advantage of.

My college plans changed after I married my husband. He wasn’t quite done with school yet so my goals of starting graduate school were put on hold, which was fine. I had no idea how horrible the job market was (and still is). I searched from Springville all the way to Salt Lake City and it took me three months to find a minimum wage job. After spending thousands of dollars on school, I was making the same amount I was in high school. Fortunately I only spent three weeks there and was offered a job that paid well, but was only 30 hours a week (a little over 1500 hours a year) with no benefits. Since it paid so well I was more than willing to pay for private insurance for my husband and I. Things were fine and we were able to pay for our very modest lifestyle, keep my husband in school (though that still required student loans), and save a little for future grad school applications and flights to interviews.

About twelve months later, in April, I was pulled into a meeting with HR so they could explain to us some of the effects of Obamacare on our departments and hiring processes. They said they received the regulations in February and it took them a couple months to sort through it and figure out how they were going to accommodate it. Here are some of the issues I have seen since being informed of these “helpful” policies:

•  My company has reduced ¾ time employees to working 28 hours per week instead of 30 hours—including my position. I don’t blame them, they are a huge company and that would cost an enormous amount of money to make all the ¾ time employees full time. The premise behind the law is understandable, “yeah, it sounds great to make 30 hour employees get full time benefits,” but who on earth thought companies wouldn’t reduce hours? For me, cutting down to 28 hours per week is a pay decrease in just under $2,000 a year.

o   In my budgeted world, that's a pretty big decrease—a little more than 3 month’s rent or almost my entire year’s worth of insurance that I pay out of pocket. So, I still don't get insurance from work, but now I have less overall money to pay for my insurance.

o   But hey, Obamacare provides me with free birth control, so I'm saving $84 a year on birth control.... With my job, that would only be 4 hours of work that would pay for an entire year of birth control. I would much rather pay $84 than lose $2,000.

• Another stipulation is that I can’t work two part-time jobs for the same company or else they’d have to pay for the insurance benefits still. Unfortunately, the company I work for provides a massive amount of jobs in Utah. Again, with my hours being cut I would like to find another part-time job, but I miss out on a lot of jobs that I am well-qualified for because I would violate this rule. This leaves me with a lot of mall jobs that I can apply for, but who won’t hire me because they think I won’t stay long.

• A girl I work with is suffering from these policies in a different way. She has a full-time position in our company, and is currently expecting her first child. She didn’t want to work full-time after giving birth and our boss was perfectly fine putting her at a part-time position and hiring someone else for the full-time. Because of the new hours, she would have to wait 6 months before she could come back to work—even for part-time work only. Her options are to either work full time when she wants to be able to spend time with her newborn, or she has to quit and have no employment. For an administration who proclaims their love of women’s rights, that is a pretty anti-woman and anti-family policy. There are more desires than simply full time work or full time stay at home mom, but these policies don’t help.

• At this meeting, we were told of these policies and then told that we need to expect more policy changes, but that they have no idea what they are yet because the government hasn’t given them yet. How is it legal to enforce a law when the government hasn’t even told companies what all the policies are yet?

•  Even though not every change in my company is specifically stated by Obamacare, companies have to adjust so much in order to comply. Those policies make sure the company is in accordance with the law, but it’s at the expense of the employees. You know, the ones the president says he’s trying to help.

• Since my hours have been cut and our income has decreased I have been looking for a full-time job. Since February I have applied to at least 70 positions between Utah and Arizona, which I have been well qualified for. I have had two interviews, one job which was offered to me, but I turned it down because they went back on their pay. I would have earned $3,000 less than what I currently earn. There are even less full-time jobs posted and tons of people applying for them.

• My husband and I would like to start our family. We would be great parents and raise our kids to work hard and help others. I will not have a child with the insurance we currently have because we’d pay tons out of pocket, and I will not have a child with no insurance. I make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, so I would have to quit my job to qualify for welfare. I am not going to quit my job in order to go on welfare to have a kid. That’s a real lack of integrity, which our government may not mind, but I do. Thus far, Obamacare has done nothing to decrease my insurance costs—but it has successfully decreased my earnings.

• These laws will only make it harder for people who take pride in working hard to provide for their families and easier for those who don’t want to work to justify going on welfare. I am very willing to help out those in need and I donate regularly, but I don’t condone teaching people it’s okay not to try to improve their own situation. It’s extremely frustrating to not find work when you want it, it is depressing, and eventually individuals will stop trying to find quality employment that provides for their needs. Then those that are working will be paying even more for those who don’t work. I think Obamacare and other policies from this administration do nothing to encourage people to work hard, but they entice people to do even less.

I like to think the best of people and their intentions. I hope the administration isn’t intentionally putting the hard-working American citizens at a disadvantage, but the more I see these negative effects, the harder it is to believe. The name “Affordable Care Act” is an oxymoron.  With all the suffering happening to citizens because of these rules, our political leaders owe it to us to work to change this. I am 26 years old and am learning how to be involved in the political process and be part of determining what happens to my hard-earned money. I did not vote for you—I still don’t even know when those elections are (a sad commentary on American education in itself)—but I turn to you as my representative in Congress. I hope this letter helps you understand some of the effects of Obamacare; I’m sure there are thousands more stories similar to mine. Ultimately, I hope this encourages you to do all you can to make necessary changes so I don’t have to spend my entire life paying off bills for basic care. Even if this gets passed, I hope you do everything possible to work towards another resolution that would actually be affordable.

Sincerely,

Katie