The ACA Turns Ten Years Old Today, and We Are So Grateful.

March 23, 2020

Dear PWN Family,

Ten years ago today, something monumental happened. When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law on March 23, 2010, it meant–for the first time in this nation’s history–that insurance companies could no longer discriminate against people living with HIV and other preexisting conditions. It meant an expansion of state Medicaid programs that provided comprehensive coverage to hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV for the first time. It meant that insurance policies had to provide essential benefits including prescriptions; contraceptive, prenatal, and newborn care; emergency room services and hospitalization; mental health care and substance abuse treatment; services and devices for people with chronic conditions or disabilities; and more.

Will you join us in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the ACA by taking our pledge to be a #HealthCareVoter in 2020?

Over the past ten years, the same politicians on the right and corporate interests who tried to block the ACA have invested heavily in giving it a bad name and blaming it for problems that are actually the product of a for-profit health care system and/or the endless attacks on the ACA by Congress, the Trump administration, and companies and governors that have sued to undermine its protections and advances. We refuse to go backward, and are committed to protecting and improving upon the ACA.

Photo by TW Collins

Photo by TW Collins
In honor of the ACA’s tenth birthday, Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN) is releasing our Love Letters to the ACA series in HIV Plus Magazine. You can read our first op-ed in the series today (excerpted and linked below). Stories from our members will be released over the coming days–stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter!

Are you a woman or person of trans experience living with HIV who would like to share a love letter to the ACA? Contact [email protected] to get your story in the series.

If you’ve seen any news in the last 10 days or so, you haven’t been able to miss that coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, is on track to ravage the U.S. population. The consequences of COVID-19 will depend on our response. If COVID-19’s trajectory to date in China, Italy, and the U.S. has revealed anything, it’s that our individual health is deeply entwined with the health of those around us. When more of our community members are well, when it comes to coronavirus, we as individuals are more likely to be well.

Keeping people well requires strong systems and protections for human rights. Everyone needs to be able to go to the doctor when needed; stay home from work when sick; be able to cover essential bills and feed the family when workplaces close; and manage childcare when schools close. That includes the person ringing us up at the supermarket, sitting behind us on the bus, pressing the elevator button before us, cutting our hair, and making our coffee.

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We are not going anywhere, and the current pandemic only strengthens our resolve to make this nation a place where no one is denied the care they need at any time, and where no one avoids or postpones seeking health care out of fear of bankruptcy, being dropped by their insurance, or deportation.

Yet, even as Trump and Congressional Republicans embrace measures that at any other time they would have refused to even get to the Senate floor — direct cash payments, free testing and treatment for the virus, mandatory paid sick leave for all workers — a lawsuit against the ACA supported by the White House still awaits a hearing by the Supreme Court. Texas v. United States would strike down the entire ACA — including protections for preexisting conditions and Medicaid expansion.

In honor of the ACA’s tenth birthday, PWN has collected some stories from women living with HIV whose lives it saved. Thamicha Isaac fled intimate partner violence in her native St. Martin, only to face HIV, depression, unemployment, and homelessness in New York. Today, she is an in-demand public speaker, fierce advocate, and mother of two. She credits her health and stability to Medicaid expansion. Olga Irwin has survived HIV, a heart attack, a stroke, diabetes, kidney disease — and still has put her body on the line, getting arrested at least nine times on Capitol Hill fighting to protect the ACA.