By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Those who had to buy their own health insurance before the Affordable Care Act became law are recalling the bad old days.

“I had to pay for a maternity rider,” said Kate Johnson, a dairy farmer from Hebron, Ill. “My second pregnancy, I was initially told I would be paying full cost, because I had not been paying premiums long enough on that rider.” She told a Zoom news conference Friday she cried when told her new insurance would cover everything.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) hosted the call to mark the beginning of open enrollment. “There has been no – underline, no – effort, constructively, to improve it, but, rather, a life-and-death struggle as to whether it  would survive. On seventy different occasions, the other party voted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Did they have an alternative? Never. They never came up with any substitute. They just wanted to do away with what they call ‘Obamacare.’” 

Durbin says he is hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court will not strike it down, and he also assumes the change in the Oval Office won’t hurt.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].