To the editor:

I have long been a supporter of the idea that all Americans should have the right to affordable health care. New surveys by the Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Foundation show I’m not alone; 92 percent of Americans agree with me.

Given that my support of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contributed mightily to my early retirement from Congress, one might think that I’m feeling a bit vindicated. I’m not!

Why? Because partisan attacks are threatening the advances made by this landmark legislation that provided millions of Americans with health insurance and gave us important protections. Protections like coverage for pre-existing conditions, which the U.S. Justice Department recently announced they wouldn’t defend in court.

President Trump said last year that “the best thing politically is to let Obamacare explode, and when people get a 200 percent increase, that’s the Democrats’ fault.” When support for the ACA kept increasing, however, he and the Congress gathered dynamite and lit a match.

The GOP’s repeal of the ACA’s individual mandate penalty and its proposed short-term rule plan are expected to increase the average Hoosier individual market care premium by $853.00 next year according to a recent analysis from the Center for American Progress.

If you’re among the 3.2 million Hoosiers who have employer-based health insurance, you may not see as deeply as the nearly 150,000 Indiana residents (including 4,700 veterans) who rely on the ACA for health care. You may not watch the issue as closely as the more than 1.4 million Hoosiers who get comprehensive affordable health care coverage through Medicaid, a program greatly affected by recent Republican actions.

What if you lose your job? What if you have a pre-existing condition. Before the ACA, pre-existing conditions would have been used as a reason to be denied health care coverage.

I’m not trying to whip up fear. Because it already exists, according to the Commonwealth Fund, which found that 3 in 10 people who use the ACA are worried about losing coverage. This fear shouldn’t exist. Policymakers should be working together to improve the ACA, rather than blow it up. There were bumps in the road to enact the legislation, but what’s happening now is like an interstate pileup. It’s a wreck that was not an accident. It’s being engineered by Trump and Congressional Republicans.

Indiana has seen a 7 percent decrease in its rate of uninsured citizens between 2013 and 2016 when the ACA was implemented. But the GOP sabotage put the brakes on that. Our uninsured rate increased from 8.6 percent in 2016 to 10.1 percent in 2017. That’s the wrong direction.

I encourage everyone to ask your Congressional representative if they are part of a team working to help ordinary Americans, or if they are part of the Trump demolition team. Ask them what they will do to protect the right to affordable health care that 82 percent of Republicans, 92 percent of independents and 99 percent of Democrats say they support.

And come November, remember what they said.

Baron Hill, Indianapolis

(Editor’s note: Hill is a Seymour native and a Democrat, who served five terms in the US House of Representatives as Indiana’s 9th District Congressman. He left office in 2010