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A bill intended to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — a law that provides millions of Americans, including restaurant workers, with health insurance — is on the table (again) in Congress. An initial effort to repeal the law failed in March. Many who work (or used to work) in the service or food industry have praised the ACA’s impact on their lives and well-being, which is likely why a Twitter thread from a former bartender who lives in New Orleans went viral last night.
Read his missive — which describes the realities of living without health insurance while working a physically demanding job for little pay — below.
Lot of folks talking about the Bad Old Days before the ACA- pre-existing conditions, sick babies using up lifetime limits in a week,
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Really inhumane, grotesque stuff, but mostly coming from basically middle class voices. I want to talk to you about what it was like
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
for me and my little group of friends, who never had access to the old insurance. Who had less than nothing, actually.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
The first time I got sick as an adult, my older brother shoplifted fish antibiotics from an aquarium store.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
If you do the math for a human weight, it works just the same, but it isn't a terribly pleasant experience.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I just want to pause right here and point out that we had basically normal lives. We weren't homeless, we both had jobs.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Things were touch & go for a few years but nothing that millions of people across this country don't experience every day.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Once he was stabbed at his bouncer gig and he came home and we just closed it up with duct tape. He went back to work the next day.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I bartended and cut myself on a fruit knife, had pus coming out from under my thumbnail for a week. Oh well, right.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Around that same time a friend of our lost like 10% of the flesh on his leg treating a brown recluse bite at home with witch hazel.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I lost count of the number of people close to me who died from suicides or drug overdoses. People who sincerely wanted to get better.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
A girl broke her ankle and waited so long to go to the emergency room that she somehow got staph. She's dead.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Again: regular, working people. Most of us in the bar & restaurant industry. You see us at every happy hour.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
This is how it was. Our lives came cheap. There was no hand wringing about running up our lifetime caps. We already had nothing.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
Now it's 15, 20 years later and years of this kind of work has most of us pretty fucked up. Joints, mostly.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
You've got 40 year old guys who started bar work when they were basically kids walking with canes now.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
A friend of mine in her late 40s just lost a couple toes. She didn't know she had diabetes, thought the foot pain was normal.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I signed up for the ACA in the first year and spent months in and out of hospitals, hoping I wouldn't need a hip replacement.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
A lot of us got healthcare for the first time. We stopped dying so fast from such incredibly stupid shit.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
We all have medical records now. Pages and pages of pre-existing conditions.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
None of us will ever be insurable again.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I really can't stress enough how *normal* all this seemed to me at the time. It's just the way it was.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
I have so many more little anecdotes about friends an coworkers getting permanently sick, becoming disabled, you name it.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
One time we hit the jackpot when a local dominatrix had a client who was a veterinarian. Dog antidepressants! They really work.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
It sounds insane now that I'm typing it out, years later.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
It sounds made up. It sounds like one of those famous books that gets featured on Oprah and then dragged for being a fraud.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
But this was how it was, for dozens of my friends in the industry that runs one of the most famous cities in the world.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
But hey if you're ever down here and you get hurt, half the barkeeps I used to work with know how to do stitches.
— Hell Frasier (@dubsteppenwolf) May 4, 2017
A vote on the new bill is expected to take place today in the U.S. House of Representatives. If passed by Congress, the Senate will also need to vote on and pass the measure before it could be signed into law.
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