Ann Romney Would Be SOL Without Her Wealthy Husband | Jeff ...

Ann Romney has Multiple?Sclerosis. ?It?s a terrible disease that affects millions, and the health care and insurance?ramifications?are wide ranging. ??She also has a family history of breast cancer. ?However, without her husband?s millions, she would probably be unable to find health insurance.

?Ann Romney would literally be unable to get health insurance in most states in America and if she could get it, she?d pay an unbelievable price,? said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And it probably wouldn?t cover treatments for M.S. and cancer, he said. Gruber helped develop both the Massachusetts health reform law signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 and the national law enacted by President Barack Obama two years ago.

Obama?s health care plan is the only thing that would allow both the lower and middle class from getting the same type of health coverage that Ann Romney has. ?This is an issue that affects real people.

Kelly Gaeckle [MS sufferer], a 35-year-old stay-at-home mother and a part-time fitness instructor who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., is lucky enough to have a high-cost insurance plan, but it doesn?t cover many of the medications she needs. She and her husband, who runs his own business, struggle to pay the $1,500 monthly premium on their plan, which covers the couple and their four kids. They put just about enough money into a health savings account every year to cover the plan?s high $6,500 deductible, but the funds run out quickly. After they meet the deductible and their out-of-pocket expenses hit $6,000, the insurance pays practically the full cost of their medical treatments ? but only those that are actually covered. The couple worries that its insurer will raise rates to something completely out of reach, a perfectly legal move under California law.

?I am 100 percent certain that if we lost our health insurance we would lose our house. At this point we are living month to month,? Gaeckle?s husband Peter wrote in an e-mail. The family budget is squeezed because of a rough patch in his business; access to health care services for themselves and their four children, two of whom have heart conditions, is a pressing concern. According to the most recent data available from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the direct medical costs of treating M.S. were as high as $27,000 a year for an individual in 2007.

There is a clear distinction between the candidates in this election. ?Mitt Romney has expressed support for a society in which only people who can afford tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket will get proper care. ? There is a reason that Romney?s support in the GOP primaries is centered wholly around the very wealthy. ?Mitt Romney is?explicitly changing the system for the benefit of only the wealthy, while President Obama has proposed a system in which a strong and vibrant middle class can survive. ?The only real choice in this election is which group you fall in to.

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