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“Are there no (debtor) prisons? Let them die and decrease the surplus population.”

Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” is famous for these words, but have you thought about them seriously? When the spirit teaches Scrooge who the “surplus” population is, Scrooge realizes that it’s people like him who have the power to decide who lives and who dies. Scrooge learns what many of us need to learn: we do not care about a problem until it happens to us or to someone about whom we care.

I learned this with my second cancer diagnosis. It involved a rare and aggressive cancer. My first thought was to wonder if I would be here for Christmas or if I would be in heaven. The survival rate for this cancer is1 percent, according to “Dr. Google.”

Fortunately, I found a topflight specialist, and I was covered by expanded Medicaid. In one week, with a CAT scan, DaVinci surgery and requisite tests and care, I ran up more than $90,000 in medical bills. This would be followed by more blood tests, chemotherapy and internal radiation. I also needed palliative care because I was so incapacitated by treatment that I needed to relearn how to walk and how to care for myself.

I did not have the financial resources to cover this; I drive a 19-year-old car and have a mortgage on a house that I bought for $39,000. However, everything I needed to fight my cancer was financed 100 percent by expanded Medicaid.

I am one of the faces of Scrooge’s “surplus” population. I am one of those who without the Affordable Health Care Act, would be the one who dies because she cannot pay.

So, when you vote to dismantle the ACA, please, have the guts to look me in the eye and tell me to my face that you would have chosen for me, Wendy Elsey, to die.

Wendy Elsey

Dowagiac