Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel, Getting Covered

I’m a healthy young woman, and to be honest, I never had reason to care much about healthcare until I started interning at TakeAction Minnesota. Little did I know, the Affordable Care Act (Obama’s health care reform law), has already been improving young women’s health while saving them and their families money for over three years. This law is like your secret admirer you either thought was really boring, or didn’t even realize existed.

Let me take you from apathy to infatuation in four bullet points:

• With the ACA, you get preventative care without having to share the cost. This includes birth control, STI counseling, and domestic violence screenings and much more. This is like going on a date with the ACA and having it treat you! (Isn’t it fun how I’m making the ACA seem chivalrous?)
• Now, you can stay on your parent’s plan until you are 26! Basically, this buys you time to grow up before having to worry about these things. FYI, before last summer, insurance companies could have kicked you off when you turned 19. The ACA has already heroically saved over 3.1 million of us young people from this fate!
• Even though the ACA doesn’t look at you as just a number, you could be one of the over 18.6 million uninsured women who could be eligible to get covered or score a bargain on insurance with the health care Exchange. It starts October 1^st; all you have to do is fill out one application.
• Because of the ACA, starting in 2014 insurance companies can’t turn you away for a pre-existing condition, or charge you more for being a woman. Before, even things like asthma or acne could have hurt your chances finding health insurance. The ACA likes you just the way you are.

So, now you know what the ACA has accomplished for young women. I never was very enthusiastic about laws before, but the ACA won me over. Dare I call this my first law-ve?

— Linnaea

Linnaea has twice been an intern with TakeAction Minnesota’s Together for Health program. In the meanwhile, she graduated from Minneapolis South High School, spent a year in Germany, and is off the college in the fall.