{"id":46935,"date":"2017-05-03T15:24:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T19:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=46935"},"modified":"2017-05-03T15:24:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T19:24:21","slug":"jdrf-stands-up-for-people-with-pre-existing-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=46935","title":{"rendered":"JDRF Stands Up for People with Pre-Existing Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

When my now adult daughter turned six: BAM. There it was, type 1 diabetes, something that would demand a lifetime of constant medical intervention, medications, and oversight until the cure. Back then it was just called type 1 diabetes.\u00a0We\u00a0didn\u2019t call it\u00a0a pre-existing condition.<\/p>\n

The topic of pre-existing conditions is at the heart of the current congressional health care debate. The latest change to the GOP\u2019s bill, called the MacArthur amendment<\/a> after its author, Republican House member Tom MacArthur, would allow states to opt out of several key Obamacare insurance regulations that protect people with pre-existing conditions.<\/p>\n

Some elected officials, like Mo Brooks (R-Alabama), have suggested that pre-existing conditions are a result of negligent behavior. In my daughter\u2019s case, at least, it\u2019s true. The first five years her life were filled with boozing, smoking, street fights, back alley dice games, some cock fighting and gosh knows what else. No wonder she’s saddled — since her sixth birthday — with a pre-existing condition! Shame on her.<\/p>\n

You know I\u2019m joking, right? And it sounds ridiculous, right? But here\u2019s the thing that\u2019s no joke:<\/p>\n

People with pre-existing conditions are terrified. In the hands of a very rocky Congress, access to the medical support we need to stay alive<\/em> is at risk of being ripped away from us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s terrifying.<\/p>\n

What we need on our side, many have thought, is a hero.<\/p>\n

In steps JDRF.<\/p>\n

The largest non-government diabetes research organization in the world, JDRF is also something else: A courageous powerhouse of an advocacy group on Capitol Hill. Back in the early 2000\u2019s when stem cell research was new to the public \u2013 and something that few understood \u2013 JDRF stepped up, becoming a leader in education and advocacy around that research. Within a few years, nearly 90 percent of Americans supported it. Today, the research is legal.<\/p>\n

Now, here we sit in another difficult political time, and JDRF is again taking a stand. Derek Rapp, President and Chief Executive Officer of JDRF, has issued a statement<\/a> opposing the MacArthur Amendment. He said, \u201cJDRF is deeply concerned with the MacArthur Amendment to HR 1628, the American Health Care Act (AHCA). JDRF opposes its passage because the amendment could jeopardize the insurance coverage that people with T1D rely on to live healthy lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

I applaud Mr. Rapp\u2019s statement, and it brings me to thinking about the man who really got the nation thinking about health care and the wildly unfair way we provide it: the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Kennedy, a friend of my daughter\u2019s (and mine), often told the story of the moment he realized something had to be done about health care in America.<\/p>\n

He was in Boston Hospital, sitting 24\/7 at the bedside of his son and namesake, who\u2019d been struck with cancer and lost a leg to it. There he was with is son, and his son\u2019s pre-existing condition. But that\u2019s not what moved him to choose his life mission. Rather, it was everyone else on the hospital floor. He walked the halls and nodded at other parents, some who clearly were needy, and he thought to himself: Why should my son get whatever he needs to beat this and live well, and others not? How is that right? How is that reflective of the nation we want to be? Kennedy fought until his dying day for the rest of the pre-existing conditions out there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought a lot about him recently. How if he were alive, he\u2019d laugh at my joke about my daughter\u2019s wild ways as a toddler that \u201cled to her pre-existing condition.\u201d Yes, he\u2019d laugh, but then he\u2019d speak out, loud, unabashed, and sure of what he saw as right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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