God’s Love We Deliver applauds today’s decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the whole of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The provisions rightly upheld by today’s decision will attempt to address the failings of the current health system by expanding Medicaid to more low-income people, creating open, competitive and fair marketplaces for uninsured and underinsured individuals and families to purchase private insurance, and will provide subsidies to lower income individuals to make insurance more affordable.

Two features of the ACA which were upheld that are most critical to our clients are the expansion of patient protections that prevent discrimination and denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and the removal of annual and lifetime caps on insurance coverage.  Millions of people living with chronic diseases, like our clients, will now have greater access to prevention, treatment and care.

At God’s Love, we know firsthand the devastation that lack of insurance can bring to the life of an individual. Once people have been denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, their lives, livelihoods and families are often decimated by medical costs. The ACA addresses this and helps all Americans to pool their resources to create lower healthcare costs for all.

The clients of God’s Love are fortunate to live in New York State where Medicaid coverage is relatively generous and Medicaid Redesign has already been in full force for almost two years and will continue to move ahead at a steady pace. Even so, we are concerned that the Supreme Court has allowed all states to opt out of the needed Medicaid expansion. It remains to be seen how this provision will affect the seriously and chronically ill throughout the nation.

The decision today is clearly an historic one. We look forward to full implementation of the innovative programs that are designed to drive down health costs while improving health outcomes and continuity of care. Yet standing in the present, we still see so much more to be done to advocate on the part of our clients. Challenges to the provision of care for the sickest of the sick will continue to surface and no one can predict how the full implementation of the ACA will proceed until we see the programs in action.

Regardless of the shifting healthcare landscape, our commitment to the health of our clients has not and will not shift. We know that being sick and hungry is a crisis; we answer that crisis everyday with nutritious, home-delivered meals. We will never have a waiting list for our services and we will never charge for our meals. We can only make these commitments because we know our loyal supporters – almost 20,000 – are behind our mission 100%.