Happy Birthday, ACA, keeping us healthy in the Marianas

One reason to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act is that it provided $3 million to open the Kagman Community Health Center, now serving residents of Kagman, Dandan, San Vicente, As Teo, and the surrounding areas of Saipan.

In Congress we extended the funding through 2017, which may allow expanding community health services to Rota and Tinian. The ACA--or Obamacare--also made an extra $109 million available to the Northern Marianas Medicaid program, just when our only hospital was cut from the Commonwealth's annual budget. Good management by the Medicaid office and the hospital has drawn down $55 million of that money so far--about $1 million every month--and helped keep the hospital open and we still have $54 million remaining.

I know some say get rid of Obamacare altogether. But the Commonwealth needs this money. It's true no one in the insular areas gets the federal subsidy for health insurance that other Americans can receive from Obamacare. And the guaranteed coverage for people with a prior health condition and for all family members up to age 27--those consumer protections were taken away at the request of the Commonwealth government and the insurance industry.

But these imperfections are not reasons to kill the Affordable Care Act, but to keep working in Congress to make it better.

Read this original document at: http://sablan.house.gov/happy-birthday-aca-keeping-us-healthy-marianas