Democrats dismissed the many who struggled under the new law

In his column “Sounding a health alarm’’ (Metro, May 8), Adrian Walker quotes Kathleen Sebelius, former secretary of health and human services, on the House Republicans’ proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act: “I just find it incredible that they don’t have any idea what it will cost or how many people will be impacted.’’ This from the person who oversaw the shockingly mismanaged and overpriced rollout of Healthcare.gov.

Obamacare enrollment includes millions of lower- middle-class working people who technically now have health insurance but, in actuality, no longer have insurance that would kick in before they had lost everything. Consider my friend in Pennsylvania, in his mid-50s, who worked for a small business, and in 2015 was making $42,000 a year. The best (taxpayer-subsidized) plan he could afford on the exchange had a deductible of $6,800, and he had to make significant sacrifices to be able to pay for his Obamacare plan and still cover his monthly $110 drug prescription and other medical bills.

Yes, the ACA has helped many. However, by righteously dismissing the millions who have lost the security of having useful health insurance and who simultaneously have had their standard of living diminished, progressive Democrats have led us to the Trump presidency.

Louise Vogel

Upton

There were glaring deficiencies with the Affordable Care Act

Michael P. Jeffries makes a gratuitous argument attributing criticism of the Affordable Care Act to racist feelings toward former president Barack Obama (“Obamacare repeal is based on racial resentment,’’ Opinion, May 5).

Yes, racism does persist, as Bostonians have recently been painfully reminded. But Jeffries is off base in dismissing the very real, glaring deficiencies of Obamacare.

First, the law ignored the first rule of health insurance by failing to incentivize enough healthy enrollees to join the insurance pool.

Second, and more important, it failed to ensure that the Affordable Care Act be made a national requirement. Instead, Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, in wooing several-dozen blue dog Democrats (i.e., states’ righters), converted it into a federally led program that left the choice of participation to the states. The result: More than a third of states chose not to expand Medicaid.

Obama’s 2010 promise was universal insurance for then 50 million uninsured. Seven years later, about 22 million do have insurance, while a larger group still waits. Not a one among them attributes their respective fate to the color of Obama’s skin.

Marvin Wool

Boston