The wrong health plan

Earlier this year, Jeanne Ives removed a link to the Republican Study Committee health care plan from her campaign website. She likely knew that her support of this plan would not be helpful in her run against incumbent Sean Casten for U.S. representative in IL-06. After all, Casten's support for strengthening the Affordable Care Act and achieving universal access to health care helped him beat a six-term Republican in 2018.

Ives publicly states that ACA has been weakened and is too expensive. She doesn't mention that Republicans have tried 70 times to repeal or weaken the ACA; resulting in higher premiums because there are fewer healthy people in the risk pool.

Ives would like to see those with preexisting conditions, including COVID, get health care through high-risk pools. In 2017 the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that high-risk pools have premiums nearly double those of market-rate plans, exclusion periods of 6-12 months, lifetime and/or annual limits and high deductibles.

Ives also advocates for health savings accounts, which require individuals to save up for their own health care emergencies. Health savings accounts are most beneficial to healthy, high-income earners who have excess income to contribute to these tax-exempt, interest-bearing accounts.

Ives is in lock step with Donald Trump and the GOP in their push for the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA. If they succeed, 23 million Americans, including 736,000 Illinoisans will lose health care. Center for American Progress estimates that 22,000 of these individuals reside in the 6th district.

With over 8.5 million infected by COVID-19, over 220,000 dead and millions losing their employer-based plans due to job losses, I think it is cruel to decrease rather than expand health care protections for Americans.

Sandra Alexander

Glen Ellyn