Tennesseans: ‘Will Policies Protect Us As The ACA Is Repealed?’

Republican voters in Tennessee have been vocal: They want to see the Affordable Care Act repealed. But now on the verge of becoming reality, many are telling Congress something quite different — delay.

Before the ACA, realtor Cindi Malone of Gallatin spent $1,700 a month on health coverage for her family.

“That’s a lot of money for anybody,” she says.

The premiums were high in part because of her pre-existing condition, diabetes.

She doubted Obamacare would work. But moving to an ACA plan cut her family’s premiums by a thousand dollars a month.

Those savings didn’t last.

This year, she faced premiums higher than before the ACA, and her income was too much to qualify for a subsidy. So Malone dropped out and bought a high-deductible plan that wasn’t part of the exchange, meaning she has to pay a hefty tax penalty of up to $3,000.

The fine is what galls her most.

“Just because I have insurance and you don’t like it, how can you penalize me?” she asks. “That makes no sense to me.”

But the email Malone wrote to Congressman Diane Black might be the most surprising part. It asked that if she was going to repeal Obamacare, wait and get it right.

“I am for repealing,” she says. “But it’s not as easy as waking up this morning and wiping it out because there are people like me.”

State officials have struggled to get a handle on the ACA. Insurance regulators say they approved the dramatically higher premiums people like Malone face because the alternative was worse: Providers pulling out of the state altogether. Tennesseans are among the least healthy people in the country, with high rates of smoking, obesity and diabetes.

And Governor Bill Haslam’s plan to expand Medicaid — which might have taken pressure off insurers — was voted down by the legislature.

So now it’s on Tennessee’s Republican members of Congress to find an answer. And some seem to be listening.

“Obamacare should be repealed, finally, only when there are concrete, practical reforms in place that give every American access to truly affordable health care,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said on the floor of the U.S. Senate this week.

Alexander’s views are important, since he’s the chairman of the Senate’s health committee. That puts him in a position to steer the debate over repeal and replacement.

He says Congress should act immediately to lower premiums for people who’ve bought plans through the ACA. And Washington should be prepared to spend several years transitioning them into a Republican-designed alternative.

Moving slowly sounds like a good approach to Sherry Cothran, the pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church on Charlotte Pike in Nashville.

“I just see a lot of at-risk people who feel very abandoned by the system,” she says.

Cothran is part of a group of ministers urging Republicans in Congress to have a plan in place before they repeal the law.

“We want to see all of our political representatives on both sides of the aisle look at human dignity, and look at our moral responsibility to people in general, and put that before politics,” she says.

Cothran believes a path can be found that preserves coverage for vulnerable Tennesseans, and she hears Republicans saying the right things about replacing Obamacare. The question on many minds in the state is whether those words will translate into policies that protect them as the ACA is repealed.