For Carol Elliott, a Port Aransas resident in her early 60s, the Affordable Care Act is not a failure. “The Affordable Care Act saved my life,” the musician says. Elliott lived in Nashville for a long time, but has spent the last 15 years living in the island town in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas shore. She says money has always been tight, and she’s had to cut corners through the years. That’s often meant she’s been priced out of health insurance. But when the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was passed in 2009, things started looking up. That was especially true when an online marketplace allowing people to buy insurance directly from companies with the help of government subsidies was created under the law. As soon as the exchange was up and running in Texas, Elliott says, she signed up. “And a week later – maybe it was a couple weeks – I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she says. Doctors caught her cancer early, and Elliott was able to avoid chemotherapy. Her
↧