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I am a nurse at a local hospital; I also teach nursing part time and consider myself an advocate for my patients.
Everyone needs access to affordable quality care, and the health care law has provided that for so many Pennsylvanians. Patients are getting healthier because they have access to preventive care. We catch chronic conditions before they create life-threatening illnesses, and fewer patients wait until they are so sick or in so much pain that they must come to the emergency room to be treated – which is the most expensive and least effective way to deliver care. People are no longer terrified of being one injury or illness away from medical bankruptcy.
There’s too much at stake for the health of Pennsylvanians to take away health care.
This is why everyone should be alarmed by the King v Burwell case that the Supreme Court heard earlier this month and that will decide whether or not millions of Americans will be able to continue to afford their health care coverage. Pennsylvanians, along with residents of 35 other states, stand to lose the tax credits that make their care affordable.
The state in which you live should not determine whether or not you can have health care.
Nurses on the front lines have seen the cost when the system isn’t working because patients don’t have affordable health care coverage. I will stand with my colleagues and fight for this law because my community and my patients need it.
Alex Rendina
Edwardsville