Through the Affordable Care Act, I was able to stay on my parents’ healthcare until I was 26, and then buy healthcare for myself and pay it every month as I worked full-time building my business and career as an adjunct professor of English and a freelance magazine writer. My brother was able to buy his insurance through the ACA to work full time at a job that does not offer health insurance, while still writing and creating comics and recording and selling music, building his own career and business rather than being forced to work for an employer to get healthcare. Millions of others were able to afford payments for care through the ACA even though they suffer from cancer or another terrible disease, because of the provision not to deny healthcare based on a pre-existing condition. Repealing the ACA harshly punishes people who put everything into their own small businesses and dreams, and sentences others to bankruptcy and death. The ACA is imperfect and should be revised and improved in many ways, but that does not mean repealing it. In my opinion, repealing the ACA with no replacement is not only irresponsible but also completely immoral.
Esquire article on the repeal here: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52234/senate-obamacare-vote/
I’m running down Kelly Drive in Philadelphia on an unseasonably warm fall day, my purple sneakers softly thudding against the ground. As I run, I notice a young boy skateboarding on the street, and the way his red hat flops to the side. I pass dry-looking trees and plump geese gathered in the grass next to the trail, and a couple kissing on a rock overlook. I notice the way the water ripples as a 
