A simple request

Tl;dr -
Call your senator, and ask them to stop the AHCA from being passed, especially if it strips those protections.
Senator Portman's office number for his Columbus office is 614-469-6774.

This is Teddy, more or less today, hanging at the Columbus Zoo.

He was born on October 28, 2013. He's smart, adorable, affectionate, sweet, kind, and (for a toddler) thoughtful. He likes trains and counting and numbers and foreign languages. He'll happily count with you in English, French, Spanish and German and if you can teach him other ways to count, you will make a friend faster than you can finish saying "Unum.*" The world is a better place for him being in it, and I am by far a better person for being his father.

This is Teddy about 11 days after he was born.

Teddy was born with a congenital heart defect called truncus arteriosis. Basically, he's going to have to have a valve in his heart replaced several times, at least, over the course of childhood as well as a conduit to carry blood from his heart to his lungs, and then either regularly through the rest of his life, or be on blood thinners with a mechanical valve. He's going to be OK as long as he has those surgeries. Here's the thing, though; those surgeries are not cheap. Amy has fantastic health insurance, so we're fine right now. But when people start to talk about cutting protections for pre-existing conditions, they're talking about cutting protections that will let Teddy have a job not tied to insurance as he grows up. When they talk about eliminating rules to protect against life-time maximums, they're talking about making it so that an insurance company can decide that once he reaches a certain age, he can't keep getting the regular maintenance surgery he might need to stay alive. This is why I care about the health insurance debate. This is why I rail against people trying to eliminate those protections. This is why, I get so angry about it.

So, if you think that it's not OK for Teddy to have to beg and hunt and pray he can find a job that has the kind of insurance that might let him stay alive, then I want to ask you to do a simple favor, for him.
Call your senator, and ask them to stop the AHCA from being passed, especially if it strips those protections.
Senator Portman's office number for his Columbus office is 614-469-6774.


*Unum is the neutral, nominative declension of "one" in Latin.