It is not only disappointing, but shocking, that Stacy Garrity, a Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, believes that ending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits was “the right thing to do.”
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution includes the responsibility to “promote the general welfare.” Health care is fundamental to the “general welfare.” Making health care more expensive and therefore less accessible is anathema to promoting the general welfare and to “doing the right thing.”
A healthy, functioning society needs healthy individual members of society. As a nurse practitioner and a nursing professor, I have seen firsthand the consequences to the health of individuals and society when health care is inaccessible. Not only does lack of health care access negatively affect individual health, it also negatively affects a highly functioning society.
Gov. Josh Shapiro is working hard on maintaining and strengthening access to health care. “Getting stuff done” is his motto, and I applaud his support of the ACA, especially as politicians such as Garrity believe that chipping away at the ACA is right.
In the 1970s we had a saying that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Unfortunately, Garrity seems to perceive this differently.
Ellen Olshansky
Squirrel Hill