Recognizing that they don’t have the votes for a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans opted for a reconciliation bill that effectively picks the ACA apart, turning it into legislative Swiss cheese. At this point, it seems to provide more questions than answers about the future of health care in America.
That’s especially true for disabled Americans, who have feared a Republican rollback of the changes that enabled them to access comprehensive health care—some for the first time. It now appears they were right to worry.
Approximately twenty percent of Americans, or 56.7 million people, identify has having some degree of disability. Many of them require specialized health care, from routine visits for relatively healthy people with stable impairments, to round-the-clock support for those who need help with tasks of daily living. Disabled people may have the most to lose with proposed reforms to the ACA—and, some fear, they also have a smallest voice in the conversation.
