Fight for your right to good healthcare

To live in fear isn’t freedom: fear of bankruptcy by medical debt, fear of being denied lifesaving treatment and medicines, fear of being pruned from privileged premium pools because you find a lump in your neck.

Not your problem? I didn’t think so, either.

Then a golf ball-size tumor grew under my ear when I was 17: a rare double lymphoma with an even rarer chance of survival. My only shot was to spend the equity of my health by enduring a course of chemotherapy and radiation that inflicted severe neuropathy and organ damage.

But I will never stop feeling grateful.

I survived, and I thought I’d be treated with understanding. Instead, Republicans are punishing me and the other 70 million (one out of four) Americans who live under the oppression of chronic illness or disability.

And we can’t say we didn’t see this coming.

In 2017, Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. During the 2024 campaign, Vice President JD Vance proposed the idea of separate premium pools for the sick. And recently, GOP lawmakers abandoned millions of Americans by cutting Medicaid, drowned the rest in administrative burden, and punished hospitals with funding cuts that threaten their operation, many in rural areas where healthcare is already scarce.

And if you’re on Medicare, get ready to fight them for prior authorization on every test and procedure at a time when you have more important things to worry about.

Now they’re coming for the subsidies that help working families afford healthcare. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R., Mo.) started laying the foundation on Fox News by saying 2.5 million able-bodied Americans receive subsidies even though subsidies are income-based, not disability-based.

If they can’t seal the well, they’ll poison it by not voting for subsidies. Premiums will soar for 50 million Americans enrolled in the ACA by as much as 18%, and then, with nothing to replace it, they’ll call it a broken, bad system that burdens American families and repeal it.

But let’s not worry about it, because cancer happens to other people, right? And if it does … thoughts and prayers. Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) already enlightened us: “We are all going to die.”

Well, thanks. I hadn’t realized that.

You see it, don’t you? They’re sharpening their knives, changing the narrative in the hopes that working American families will buy the spin that they’re just eliminating fraud.

It all sounds good. I salute the elimination of fraud in the system. As a disabled cancer survivor, nothing burns me more, but these are indiscriminate eviscerations that are made without regard to the context of a person’s situation.

Just because you can work doesn’t mean you can find a job with adequate healthcare, or that you’re paid enough to afford premiums, especially in our current economy, plagued by declining job reports and outrageous prices. And medical costs are going up in 2026.

It is your problem, too, and we need to demand more of our elected officials to protect us.

The role of government is to improve the lives of its citizens: to provide infrastructure and services, to listen to the needs of all its people (not just the wealthy or influential), and to protect us. Democracy cannot function if it values some more than others, and the health of its people is the health of its industry, its security, and stability.

These heartless cuts affect us all, healthy and sick, old and young, because tomorrow morning you, too, could wake up with a lump under your ear.

Our mortality unites us: All of us will get sick, suffer injury, or grow old. So, please make your voice known and vote in 2026 to protect our healthcare. If the Democrats are forced to shut down Congress to fight for our right to be healthy and protected, join them in their protest, because they are fighting for all of us.

After all, to live in fear isn’t freedom, and we all deserve affordable medical insurance.

T. Fox Dunham is an author living in Philadelphia. He’s a disabled cancer survivor, and his articles on healthcare, social justice, and protecting the vulnerable have been published by newspapers across Pennsylvania.