How do copays affect the decisions you or your family make about your healthcare and your budget? We make $450 a month after taxes and deductions, grand total. Yes, $450. I have PTSD, bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder, ADD, sciatica, and physical disability; without my medications I literally am too afraid to try leave the house, and stairs are impossible. My wife requires hormones and meds for similar mental illness. We also have a six-year-old child to take care of. I wore flip-flops into December so she could eat; if I have to choose between my meds and her food, I will do it again without hesitation, but I cannot function without them. For those of us in poverty, extra barriers to healthcare is ALWAYS an extra burden on a growing mountain of them. $20 extra per month for required medicine, on top of copays for the actual appointments, is outside our means. This policy will actively prevent us from reaching the routine healthcare we require to be productive citizens.

Is there anything else you’d like us to know? This is simply the latest in a long line of prohibitive micromanaging of medical care by people who are not medically trained. Disallowing multiple appointments on the same day is also a recent and dispassionate barrier.

Please tell us how some or all of these changes affect you, your family, or your community. These changes will actively prevent myself, my family, and my community from accessing the routine and mundane healthcare that is absolutely required to keep people satisfied and productive citizens of society. If you legislate your workforce to literal death, who will pay for your fancy, warm homes?

Remember me when you lay down in your comfortable bedding tonight, Bevin. I’ll be here, sleeping on the floor, sick, and too poor to afford health. Gods save us from politicians; they demand we live up to their expectations without first knowing or caring how we even survive.