Former Congresswoman Pens Emotional Plea To Colleagues For Affordable Health Care

In an open letter revealing she has multiple sclerosis, a former congresswoman appealed to her congressional colleagues to consider her story when deciding whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) argued in the letter, published Friday evening in The Washington Post, that the Republican attempts to repeal the landmark law endanger her personally given both her medical condition and the economically precarious position in which she finds herself.

Edwards made the case that her contraction of a chronic illness despite a healthy lifestyle demonstrates the importance of protecting people with preexisting conditions.

“I pray that as you finish doing whatever it is that you are doing with health care, you remember that I was one of your colleagues, that I worked hard and that I don’t have a preexisting condition because I was a bad person who led an unhealthy life,” she concluded the missive. “I have a preexisting condition simply because I do; and I, like millions of other Americans in the same situation, deserve quality, affordable health care.”

Edwards described a life as an avid runner and biker, who began experiencing muscular pains last year that she would later learn were symptoms of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis. While she was participating in a Democratic sit-in for gun control legislation on the House floor in June 2016, a House physician called her into his office and told her the diagnosis. Though she was shaken, Edwards recalled, she returned to the sit-in.

Edwards, a senior fellow at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, nonetheless described herself as “not employed.” She currently pays $800 in …