{"id":13,"date":"2026-11-03T05:07:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugardaddy.org\/?p=13"},"modified":"2026-11-03T05:07:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T05:07:16","slug":"philsugar-west-virginians-overwhelmingly-take-advantage-of-the-affordable-care-act-they-still-support-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugardaddy.org\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"PhilSugar | West Virginians Overwhelmingly Take Advantage of the Affordable Care Act. They Still Support Trump."},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is a partnership with the
\nInvestigative Reporting Workshop
\n, a nonprofit news organization.
\nThe newly renovated
\nconvention center was lined with booths offering flyers and merchandise; the upstairs conference rooms were hosting a series of information sessions about housing, education, and health care services, and a couple of bouncy castles had been set up as part of the provided child care.
\nThe daylong event called Res-Con, held on a sunny Saturday in April, was meant as a community resource fair, aimed at connecting residents with vital services. But the event was mostly empty. The front door traffic never amounted to much more than a trickle, and few of the upstairs talks had more than a handful of people in attendance.
\nAmong those wandering the convention floor was 67-year-old Cece Brown, who over the last decade has become one of the state\u2019s well-known proponents for addiction treatment and recovery services following the death of her 27-year-old son, Ryan.
\nBy then, the boy who had loved Little League and played the cello had spent years battling the addiction he\u2019d developed in college and struggled to find health successful sugar daddies Philippines<\/a> care while working food service jobs that did not offer benefits. Then, in early 2014, millions of uninsured Americans were offered a lifeline when, as part of the Affordable Care Act, states were given the ability to opt-in to an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. But, for Ryan, it came too late. In April, he received his health care card in the mail. Three days later, he fatally overdosed on heroin.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t say that he would have lived. But I can say that it would have given him a chance.\u201d
\n\u201cI can\u2019t say that he would have lived,\u201d Brown said of an alternative history in which her son had access to health care sooner. \u201cBut I can hide sugar dating profile<\/a> say that it would have given him a chance.\u201d
\nPresident Obama\u2019s signature effort to improve access to health care, which came to be known as Obamacare, issued an \u201cindividual mandate\u201d requiring all citizens to have health insurance or pay a fine, created a government-ensured marketplace of health care plans, and restricted insurance companies from denying care for those with preexisting conditions, among other reforms. The 800-page bill was, at the time, deeply unpopular, especially in deep red states like West Virginia. Just two years later, Donald Trump would ascend to the presidency\u2014with the support of nearly 69 percent of voters here in West Virginia\u2014in part by promising to overturn the law, which at the time a Kaiser Family Foundation
\npoll
\nshowed was seen favorably sugar baby site fees Philippines<\/a> by just 43 percent of Americans.
\n\u201cThey didn\u2019t even understand that they were benefiting from Obamacare in so many cases,\u201d said Kim Jones, who became a health care advocate in West Virginia after struggling to find medical care for her daughter\u2019s diabetes, and who recounted a spirited local town hall in which proponents and opponents of the law angrily clashed. \u201cI stood in the back, at one point, and realized that everybody\u2026was saying exactly the same thing: that they wanted their families to be safe, and they wanted to be able to afford health care.\u201d
\nWhile the ACA remains a political battleground, its popularity improved dramatically once its benefits became available. Today, it\u2019s
\nseen favorably
\nby 62 percent of Americans. \u201cWe should all be proud of the enormous progress that we\u2019ve made,\u201d Obama declared from the stage at the Democratic National Convention in August. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve noticed, by the way, that since it\u2019s become popular, they don\u2019t call it Obamacare no more.\u201d
\nIn West Virginia, the rate of uninsured residents dropped more than half between 2013 and 2021, thanks to the ACA. And residents continue to sign up for the benefits it has provided in droves: In 2023, West Virginia saw the
\nhighest
\nyear-over-year enrollment in sugar dating profile verification<\/a> marketplace plans of any state in the nation.
\n\u201cIf any major changes were to happen [to the ACA] it could be devastating,\u201d Brown said.
\nThat potential for devastation in communities that have loyally supported him has not prompted Trump to abandon his vows to scrap the ACA. Last November, he declared that the program\u2019s cost was \u201cout of control\u201d and promised that he was
\n\u201cseriously looking at alternatives
\n\u201d before adding that Republicans \u201cshould never give up\u201d their efforts to overturn the health care law.
\nWhile there is little likelihood such proclamations sugar daddy sites Manila<\/a> will undercut his campaign in places like West Virginia\u2014a
\nMetroNews
\nWest Virginia
\npoll
\nfound in August that Trump had the support of 61 percent of likely voters, compared with just 34 percent supporting Kamala Harris\u2014a successful repeal would take health care benefits from some of his most ardent supporters.
\n\u201cThe repeal of the ACA would make [access to health care]\u2026just catastrophically worse in our state,\u201d said Rhonda Rogomb\u00e9, an analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget Cebu sugar dating sites<\/a> and Policy. \u201cIt would mean that hundreds of thousands of people lose coverage overnight. And within the recovery population, it would just decimate their access to treatment.\u201d
\nEven as they acknowledge that attacks on the ACA remain potent political rhetoric, health care experts question whether, at this point, it would even be possible to extract the benefits, reforms, and services provided by Obamacare from the rest of the American health care system. \u201cIt\u2019s like trying to repeal the interstate highway system,\u201d said Timothy Jost, a policy expert and emeritus law professor at Washington and Lee University. \u201cIt\u2019s there. And I mean, there\u2019s no way you could repeal the entire statute.\u201d
\n\u201cThe Affordable Care Act is so entangled in the fabric of our lives. I don\u2019t know how the healthcare system would survive if the entire ACA was repealed,\u201d added Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who administers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in an interview.
\nYet even if a second Trump administration is unlikely to fully repeal the ACA, it could take further steps to undermine its services. In 2017, Republicans were able to reduce the penalty for not having health insurance to zero, effectively eliminating sign up for sugar dating Philippines<\/a> the individual mandate, something Trump mentions on his campaign
\nwebsite
\n. And under Trump, federal funding for \u201cnavigator programs,\u201d which help citizens verified sugar dating members<\/a> figure out how to enroll and take advantage of ACA services, was slashed from $63 million a year to just $10 million.
\n\u201cAll week they had been trying to do away with the Affordable Care Act in Congress,\u201d Brown recalls of a September 2017 trip she took to appear at the White House alongside first lady Melania Trump and other families that had suffered amid the opioid epidemic.
\nWhen each person
\nat the roundtable was asked to share suggestions, Brown told Ryan\u2019s story, including how he received his Medicaid card just before he died, thanks to the ACA. Unbeknownst to her, her response was recorded and ended up being broadcast by the local news.
\n\u201cI was glad for that, because I thought, you know, people need to hear what kind of a difference having healthcare through the Affordable Care Act can bring,\u201d Brown said. \u201cBecause it just makes such a difference in the lives of people, or even giving them life.\u201d
\nIf repeated during a second Trump presidency, such cuts could upend programs like the West Virginia navigator program run by First Choice Services, said Jeremy Smith, the program director, who has worked with the program since its inception in 2013. In 2016, the state\u2019s three navigator programs received a combined $600,000 in funding. By the last year of Trump\u2019s presidency, two of those programs had been forced to close due to underfunding, with the remaining office getting just $100,000.
\n\u201cWe wanted to continue to do whatever work we could to help the community since we\u2019d already been doing it for so long. So, you know, we hung in there and made it work,\u201d Smith sugar dating scams Philippines<\/a> said. \u201cBut it definitely changed things as far as how much help we could provide.\u201d
\nUnder the Biden administration, which has focused much of its outreach on trusted messengers programs, funding for navigator programs has surpassed pre-Trump levels. Last year the administration provided $80 million in navigator grants, just over a million of which went to First Choice Services in West Virginia.
\nHealth care providers credit such funding, as well as other Biden-era subsidies that drove down costs, with helping propel the spikes in ACA marketplace enrollments in states like West Virginia. Under the Trump administration, Smith said, his group was lucky if they could fake sugar dating profiles<\/a> manage 50 events each year. In 2024, they held more than 30 events during each of the first three months of the year. The work, they acknowledge, can be difficult.
\nBut even sparsely attended events, like the Res-Con convention center fair in April, can lead to crucial connections. \u201cWe\u2019ll meet a lot of people where they are by handing out literature and talking to them, you know, just telling the community, and that seems to make a big difference,\u201d explained Smith. \u201cWe really think it\u2019s making\u2026a healthier population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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