Scott Powers
U.S. Rep. Val Demings is responding to the latest U.S. Senate health care bill by soliciting, gathering, videotaping and posting stories of Central Florida residents helped by the Affordable Care Act.
The stories begin with one about someone identified only as a Central Florida small business owner named Kirk, who begins his testimonial by complaining that the price of health insurance had climbed too high, but says he came to appreciate it when he got stage-four bladder cancer.
“When I was diagnosed with that, we were on the ACA,” Kirk said. “By having that insurance coverage in place already, that’s really what helped me survive. Before the ACA, I would have lost my insurance. I would have lost my health care.
“So the laws ACA put in place helped protect people like me to not be discriminated against just because we are sick. It’s not any fault of my own because I have cancer,” Kirk states. “I look at the future and think, ‘What’s going to happen if these protections for pre-existing conditions are taken away?’ It scares me. It scares me to death, quite literally.”
Kirk’s video is one of 10 that Demings has gathered so far that she intends to share on social media, according to a press release from her office.
Demings, a Democrat from Orlando, said she wants to work with Republicans and Democrats to fix the current health care laws, not to repeal them.
“It was so important for me to hear the stories from people in Central Florida who have been affected by the ACA, whether their experience has been positive or negative,” Demings stated in the release. “We know the ACA is not perfect, but let’s work together to make it better, and I’m hoping by sharing some of these stories I can show why that is so important.”
