upworthy

aca

Family

Julia Louis-Dreyfus shares her breast cancer diagnosis with a heartfelt call to action.

The 'Veep' star has an important message for her fans.

On Thursday, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus announced via Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Just 11 days after accepting her sixth straight Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, the "Veep" star shared her diagnosis with the world.

"1 in 8 women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one," she wrote.

"The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union," she added. "The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal health care a reality."

Each year, an estimated 231,840 U.S. women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and more than 40,000 will die. Early detection plays a huge role in reducing that number.

Breast cancer accounts for the second-most cancer-related deaths in U.S. women behind only lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Regular screenings — self-checks and with a doctor — can aid in catching the cancer at its most treatable point, early on.

In her call to action, Louis-Dreyfus sounds optimistic, urging her followers to keep fighting so that others have access to the same care she'll be able to receive. While recent efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act have fallen flat, we are far from having "universal health care." 11% of women ages 19 to 64 in the U.S. don't have any form of health insurance. While that number has fallen since the ACA's implementation, it still means that millions of women are unable to access preventive care.

Thanks to a number of health centers around the country, such as Planned Parenthood, low-income and uninsured women aren't left completely out in the cold. Unfortunately, these groups are frequently under attack from political opponents.

Louis-Dreyfus's decision to share her diagnosis with her fans serves as a reminder that any of us can be hit by illness at any time — making the fight for universal care that much more important.

It's never a bad time to call your members of Congress and let them know that you want to live in a world where everybody has access to the same care she has.

We wish Louis-Dreyfus the absolute best of luck going forward.

Louis-Dreyfus accepts the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on Sept. 17, 2017. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

More

Rather than yell at her senator over health care, she showed her a photo of her daughter.

Rev. Janice Hill wasn't planning to go to D.C. last Tuesday, but her daughter's health was so important, she skipped a meeting and got on a bus.

Several hours later, the West Virginia pastor found herself in a meeting with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R), where she showed the lawmaker a photo of her daughter Amy, a cancer survivor, and asked her not to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

"These are real people. My daughter," the nervous Hill said as the senator listened. "And so I just want you to have that in your brain when you look at this."

The encounter was filmed and posted online:

"The next thing you know, somebody said, 'Girl, it’s gone viral,'" Hill says in an interview.

Hill's conversation with Capito has been watched over 4 million times since it went public on Thursday.

The polite yet dogged exchange struck a chord with Americans who fear that new Senate legislation released last week could endanger their ability to pay for care by doing away with consumer protections implemented by the ACA.

Capito has yet to take a position on the bill, which would make substantial cuts to Medicaid and allow states to enable private plans to waive certain "essential" health benefits. CNN included Capito on a list of 12 Republican senators whose votes remain in play.

Capito's office has not responded to Upworthy's request for a comment.

Amy was diagnosed with neuroendocrine small cell carcinoma, a rare form of endocrine cancer, in July 2013 — an illness she's still fighting to this day.

Hill fears her daughter, who gets coverage through her employer, has already exceeded any prospective lifetime benefits cap, which would end insurance payments over a certain lifetime dollar amount or on specific benefits. The ACA outlawed such caps, but they could be brought back under the new legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell takes questions on the health care legislation. Photo by Saul Loeb/Getty Images.

Within the first seven months of her treatment, Amy had already accumulated more than $1.2 million in costs.

"She is not a drain on this country," Hill says. "She’s been a marathon runner. She doesn’t smoke. Drinks very little. Is in great physical shape. And yet, her world and my world got turned upside down when she got that phone call about this cancer."

Opposition to the legislation emerged swiftly after the text of the bill was made public on June 22.

Illinois residents protest the bill. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

On June 22, over 50 activists with disabilities from ADAPT were arrested outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office while protesting the bill's proposed Medicaid cuts.

Meanwhile, thousands have turned to social media to express concern about how the legislation might affect their families who depend on Medicaid, have pre-existing conditions, or have chronic illnesses that are expensive to treat. A Congressional Budget Office report estimates that 22 million fewer Americans will be insured by 2026 if the bill becomes law.

Hill, who has spoken privately with many of her congregants about their health challenges, says the legislation is "the most immoral bill that has come about in a long time."

In addition to her daughter's spiraling costs, she worries the bill would create an untenable situation for the 30% of West Virginians enrolled in Medicaid and the rural hospitals that would be in danger of shutting down if the program is gutted.

On June 26, Hill joined a rally in Charleston to encourage her fellow West Virginians to continue pressuring the state's two senators to reject the bill.

Initially, she planned to use some of her time to praise Capito for listening.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Photo by Jim Watson/Getty Images.

Instead, Hill told attendees at the rally that the tone of the conversation was less important than what the senator plans to do next.

"I very passionately said, 'You know what? She was nice to me, but so what? I don’t care if she’s nice to me,'" Hill explains. "She could have called me every name in the book, she could have spit in my face, and I don’t care. I just want her to vote the correct way.'"

More

A Democratic senator's simple request to restore order in chaotic times.

Sen. Brian Schatz needs three Republican senators to take a stand in the name of normalcy.

Nobody really knows what's in the Senate's health care bill. It's a massive problem that needs to be addressed, so that's what Sen. Brian Schatz did.

Monday night, the Hawaii Democrat took to the Senate floor to criticize how his colleagues are handling their chamber's version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). The bill, which is being written in secret by 13 Republican men, is expected to come up for a vote as early as next week. Understandably, that has some senators (and, you know, the American people) a bit stressed out by what has turned out to be a super-shady process.

In his floor speech, Schatz called on leadership to release the bill and let it "see the light of day."

All GIFs from Brian Schatz/YouTube.

A push for more transparency — especially when it comes to how our laws get made — isn't a Democratic or Republican issue. It's about accountability.

In 2010, now-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price (who was a member of Congress at the time) pushed for "a little sunlight."

Vice President Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana, spoke out against "legislation that'll affect 100% of the American people" being put together in secret.

And Sen. John Cornyn made a similar push to include "the rest of America that was excluded from secret talks" on health care reform.

Of course, in 2010, Price, Pence, and Cornyn were all talking about a different health care bill: the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare.

Back then, the argument that the ACA was being written in "secret" was mostly hyperbole. Today, what's happening with the AHCA is unprecedented.

Andy Slavitt worked closely with Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA's design and implementation during President Obama's term. On Twitter, he recently laid out the major differences between the Senate's process in 2009 and 2010, when it was considering the ACA, and what's happening in 2017 with the AHCA.

While the process for the ACA in 2010 certainly could have been more transparent, there's no denying the difference between 36 days of hearings and 18 days of markup then to absolutely nothing at all now — from 26 days of scheduled floor debate to as little as 20 hours. There's a big difference between the two processes, and whatever transparency problems existed back in 2010 have gotten much worse in 2017.

Like so much else in 2017, this secretive process is not normal.

Schatz's speech was a call to action for members of both parties to no longer let "not normal" be normal.

"This is the world's greatest deliberative body," said Schatz, referring to a sometimes tongue-in-cheek nickname for the Senate and its reputation for exhaustive debate on important pieces of legislation compared to the rapid-fire workings of the House of Representatives.

"Let the Senate be the Senate," he urged his Republican colleagues, hoping to find three who are willing to take a stand in the name of restoring order. If, after debating the bill on its merits in the light of day, the Senate passes it, at least it would be a return to how things are supposed to work.

It's easy to pin the breakdown of our political process on President Trump, but the truth is our legislators have the power to restore order — if they want to.

This isn't about Trump; it's about men and women, some of whom have been in Congress for decades, exploiting the new "everything goes" attitude in Washington where nothing seems to matter.

But this bill certainly does matter — to Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike. Wherever we stand with our own personal politics, we should all be able to agree these types of massive decisions shouldn't be made in secret and shouldn't be rushed.

We need to say "no" to "not normal," and that starts with calling our senators and asking them to take a principled stand on the process behind this bill.

Watch a portion of Schatz's speech below.

Family

People with pre-existing conditions had an emotional response to Jimmy Kimmel's monologue.

Becca Atherton first saw the operating room when she was a baby. Over the next 24 years, it became a familiar sight.

Atherton, who suffers from Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart disease, and pulmonary atresia, a respiratory disorder, estimates that she takes 50 pills a day and has endured four open-heart surgeries in her young life. Together, she and her mom watched Jimmy Kimmel's monologue detailing his newborn son's health emergency.

"We looked at each other when he started talking about pre-existing conditions and we were both like, 'Finally!'" Atherton says.

After Kimmel's monologue went viral, hundreds and Americans whose lives have been touched by chronic childhood illnesses took to social media to thank the talk show host for giving voice to their stories — and speaking up for their rights.

The speech captured an experience familiar to millions of families from all walks of life — from the terror of finding out your child has a life-threatening illness, to the gratitude for the work of local hospitals and medical professionals who treat those illnesses, to the importance of funding the National Institutes of Health.

It was Kimmel's emotional plea to save affordable insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, however, that struck the strongest chord with his audience.

"If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make," Kimmel pleaded at the end of the emotional monologue.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 1 in 4 Americans under 65 have conditions that would render them uninsurable under a pre-Affordable Care Act insurance model.

Kimmel's speech came as congressional Republicans are considering changes to their health care bill that could allow insurers to charge patients with pre-existing conditions higher rates. A recent amendment to the bill would allow states to wave provisions of the ACA that forbid insurance companies from factoring health history into plan pricing.

Atherton, who received the same diagnosis as Kimmel's son when she was a baby, believes Congress could do more to demonstrate they believe their plan is right for their constituents.

Becca Atherton. Photo via Becca Atherton, used with permission.

"If your new health care plan is so amazing, then prove it by giving up your government funded health care plan and join the rest of us on your new plan," Atherton says.

A Virginia performer, who goes by Jolene Sugarbaker, says they don't understand "people saying they don't want their tax money going towards people getting care, but don't mind it going towards a wall."

Sugarbaker, who had Tetralogy of Fallot surgery at 8 years old, worries that under the new plan, poorer Americans with chronic childhood illnesses won't be able to give their children the kind of care Sugarbaker received or will go bankrupt trying to pay for it.

Andrew O'Brien, a Maryland father whose 2-year-old daughter Keely nearly died from a congenital heart defect when she was an infant, said Kimmel's monologue "brought back feelings and memories," from the most difficult weeks of his family's life.

O'Brien, a Republican, believes the ACA needs "real changes," but doesn't want to see protections for patients who require intensive, ongoing care through no fault of their own scrapped.

"To go backward now and deny people the ability to obtain insurance based on a pre-existing condition would be really harmful," he says.

Andrew O'Brien (R) with son Liam, daughter Keely, and wife Jenny. Photo via Andrew O'Brien, used with permission.

He would like to see Congress craft a new bill that fixes the things that don't work with the current law, while keeping its most popular and effective provisions — like the backstops for customers with pre-existing conditions — in a way that isn't "overly partisan."

While the health care debate continues to rage in D.C., for people with such conditions and those who love them, Kimmel's contribution might wind up being invaluable.

Atherton, who will eventually need another heart surgery, hopes Kimmel's monologue will raise awareness of people like her — and what they stand to lose if their health coverage goes away.

"These are people's lives you're dealing with," Atherton says. "We have worth."

Trending Stories