Duluth couple’s Obamacare defense gets national forum

Jan. 04--A court ruling and their own experiences with a sick child and as business owners led Duluth distillers Joel and Emily Vikre to write an opinion piece that appeared online Thursday in USA Today.

The Vikres, who own Vikre Distillery in Canal Park, were reacting to the Dec. 14 ruling by a federal judge in Texas that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

"I think the ACA is a step toward saying the outcomes of the healthcare system matter to the public and certain things ought to be protected," Joel Vikre said in a telephone interview about the couple's defense of the law often referred to as Obamacare.

Attorneys general from 16 states and Minnesota's Department of Commerce on Thursday filed a lawsuit appealing the judge's ruling.

The USA Today piece, given the headline "After Obamacare ruled unconstitutional, profit-driven critics risk our 1-year-old son's life," recounted the challenges the Vikres faced late in 2017 when their son Vidar was born with heart defects. A News Tribune story in February 2018 told how Vidar faced heart surgery when he was just 5 days old.

"Our healthcare system kept Vidar alive until his body was able to begin to recover," the Vikres wrote in the USA Today column. "Thankfully, after about three months in intensive care, we were finally able to take Vidar home. Those months in the hospital were the most terrifying of our lives, but our health care came through for us."

Their insurance company spent more than $2 million on Vidar before they took him home from the hospital, they wrote.

But as business people, they can afford to provide health insurance only for their full-time employees, they wrote, so their part-time employees depend on the health exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act.

Even with the act in effect, they've had to pay for some of their son's medications out of pocket as their insurer and their pharmacist resolved disputes, they added.

In a phone interview, Joel Vikre said that although the couple defends Obamacare, they see it as only a first step.

"It's very far, still, from as a society saying health is a public good, and we ought to care not just about health insurance and the business of healthcare, but also about the health of our people," he said.

Through their business, the Vikres are members of the Mainstreet Business Alliance, which Joel Vikre describes as "a progressive counterpoint to the Chamber of Commerce." They shared their opinion piece with the alliance, which submitted it to USA Today, he explained.

Meanwhile, Vidar has had recent hospital visits, his dad said.

"Hopefully, by the time he's a little older he'll be just living a normal life," Joel Vikre said. "But he's not there yet. He still eats through a tube and has to take antibiotics all the time."

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