Blog

As Congress got back into action last week, there was one clear-cut enemy to the American public, but it wasn’t Vladimir Putin.

For some reason, Trump and the GOP love Putin.

But this thing called Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, Trump and his ilk uniformly hate with a passion.

As President Obama gives his farewell address on Tuesday, it’s undeniable what he’s done for the American people.

For Kalwis Lo, 28–born in California to Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S. in 1988–Obama did a lot more than anyone can imagine. The president gave him a chance to live.

In 2011, Lo had just graduated from UC Santa Cruz and found out he had cancer.

Listen to Kalwis tell his story in my podcast interview here.

In California, the state with the most Asian Americans, about 3,826,000 people have gained health insurance through Covered CA, the California state-run marketplace. That’s a 54% reduction in the uninsured rate, according to Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA). There are also about 16 million Californians with pre-existing conditions who could once again be denied coverage if the ACA is repealed.

Republicans gave President Obama little chance at the start of his term in 2009. Now that their titular head Trump is on the verge of leading the country, there is no doubt that their priority will be to eliminate the legacy piece of legislation of the Obama years.

Kalwis Lo can’t believe it.

“If ACA didn’t exist…no one cared that I was going to die,” Lo told me. He’s appreciative of what Obama did and doesn’t think it’s overstating it to say the president saved his life. He’s scared that Trump and others seem so hell-bent on reversing it.

Last week, Obama warned that by getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, Trump would “make America sick again.”

Lo knows first hand that it’s far more drastic than that.

“People are going to die,” he told me.