The Greatest Mother’s Day Gift

If I could give my mom any Mother’s Day gift, I’d reassure her that the health care law is safe. Because, like millions of Americans, my mom has a "pre-existing condition" that her insurance won't cover. And last month, she was forced to pay $14,000 out-of-pocket for cataract surgery. She’d hoped to wait until 2014, when the health care law is fully implemented and pre-existing condition exclusions are banned, but her vision was declining too quickly to keep putting it off.

Unfortunately for the millions of Americans who desperately need the health care law, those who oppose the law for political reasons have brutally slandered it—on the news, in Congress, even in the highest court in the land. And they’ve talked so loudly and adamantly that the law’s significance—what we truly stand to lose—has largely been lost in the debate.

Losing the law would mean losing the promise of affordable health care for all Americans. It would mean that insurance companies could continue denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, charging women more than men for the same coverage, and dropping people's coverage when they get sick.

Today, on Mother's Day, I ask those who would take away the health care law to tell me what to say to my mom if they succeed. And some esoteric constitutionality argument isn’t going to cut it—that only matters to the privileged few who’ve never had to worry about these things. What matters to me is my mother’s health.