"Last month I had health care, and this month I don't." — Rena Bumbray-Graves Testimony

Good morning and thank you for having me. My name is Joyce Renee Bumray-Graves. I am 63 years old and I live in Woodbridge, Virginia. I am a home care worker and a proud member of SEIU Virginia 512. And let me just say, start by saying that care is essential because everyone will need it at some point in their lives. I am honored to carry on the legacy of black women and other women of color like myself who have historically done the majority of care work in our country. I provide full-time care to my adoptive sister Leah who has spina bifida and scoliosis and my great niece Lisa who has scoliosis and who was born with a small brain and is profound. That means she cannot speak or feed herself and is completely dependent on others for basic life functions 24-7. Both ladies use wheelchairs. They came to live in my home in 2017 when my parents passed away because I wanted to keep them with family and they cannot help themselves. I have already been working with Leah for over 10 years. Both ladies have Medicare and Medicaid due to their disabilities. I work in health care and I can't afford health insurance. My husband is a freight driver and it would be very expensive for me to get insurance through his work. Instead we both got our health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. We were paying $5.44 per month for our premiums last year thanks to the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Now that these tax credits have been taken away the premium went up to $1,300 and something per month. We cannot afford that so we dropped our plan. My husband will be able to get on his work's insurance in February but it is too expensive to add me. I am looking for other options but I am currently uninsured. Every day I worry that if I get hurt or sick I will have to suck it up and keep working in pain. I worry if I go to the doctor emergency room uninsured I will get an outrageous bill that I cannot pay. My husband is uninsured right now until his work insurance starts next month. However he recently broke his arm and without insurance we had to pay $300 to get his cast off. $300 would then put a plastic thing on his arm. We paid the $300 because they would not see us if we did not pay it at the front desk. The other $300 we did not know we were going to have to acquire and we did not have $600 to spend at that time. We just paid something on it. I was wondering what would have happened if we did not have the $300 to get the cast off. Would we just walk out of the office with the cast still on because we could not afford to have it taken off? Would we have tried to get someone else to try to take it off? Right now I just pray I can save another $300 because when we go back to have the plastic thing taken off we will have to pay the $300 to come in the office and then we do not know how much they are going to charge to take it off his arm if we do not come up with that. I do not know what I am going to do. Everything is so expensive right now. Even the dollar store is not a dollar anymore. It is $1.50 and more. My husband is on short-term disability because he cannot drive a truck with a broken arm. I still have two years before I turn 65 and can qualify for Medicare. I have several medical conditions that I have to take care of every month. I have developed COPD because of blood clots from pulmonary embolisms. I never smoked. The blood clots have scarred my lungs and I have to be on a blood thinner the rest of my life. I cannot afford to be off my Pradaxa for more than three days. These prescriptions are very expensive out-of-pocket and even with good Rx. The doctor prescribed me another prescription that is over $300 and even with good Rx it is over almost $200 and I cannot afford that. I work so hard to keep two people with disabilities alive and I cannot afford insurance myself. I have already stopped my prescription for the powdered inhaler which helps me breathe better because I cannot afford it without insurance and I want you as members of the Congress to see me and the people I care for. I want you all to know how serious this is for my situation. You all can vote yay or nay or whatever you'll be fine but what about us? So please bring back those tax credits so that I can get my health care back. The Affordable Care Act was good insurance for me and my husband until you all took those tax credits away and it may not have been perfect but you should be working to make it better not more expensive. These tax credits made it better. Look I'm not I'm no policy expert. All I know is that last month I had health care and this month I don't because I lost my tax tax credits so I need you all to bring them back. Thank you.