Don't change Medicare Part D

In November of 2017, after years of watching the most competent and graceful person continue to fall, I wheeled my dad into a doctor's appointment that would forever change our family's lives. My mom, brother, and I sat there as one of the most reputable neurologists in the city of Chicago looked at my dad and told him that he had ALS.

Currently, ALS is a terminal disease where every muscle starts to deteriorate until the person's demise. It is a disease where you, unfortunately, watch your loved one's body break down in front of you and use technology and machines to help make that person comfortable for the life they have left.

To use technology and machines to keep your loved one comfortable is a small portion of what it takes to be a caregiver for someone with ALS, but those two aspects of the disease are why I am here asking lawmakers to please reject any change to Medicare Part D.

An increase in plan liability for a family with a patient with ALS is a matter of life or death. An average year for a patient with ALS costs over $100,000 - with insurance. Families are finding themselves in situations where their children are using their college funds to help pay for a breathing machine; they are selling their homes to afford a night nurse, so their spouse can sleep to handle being a caregiver and working to provide the insurance. A change to Medicare Part D would be whether or not a family can financially afford the care needed to keep their loved one alive.

Without technology and machines, without an increase in an out-of-pocket spending threshold, insurance allows for moments so much more personal, and those are the moments that I ask lawmakers to think of when you reject any changes to Medicare Part D.

Sabrina Johnson

Antioch