Kate LaCroix donated a kidney in 2016, feeling safe in the knowledge that pre-existing conditions were covered by her health insurance under Obamacare.
LaCroix, who lives in Boulder, owns her own integrated marketing business, Kontently, and purchased health care for herself and her family in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
While the premiums on her policy are relatively expensive, the ACA allowed her to have her own business with the assurance that a health crisis wouldn’t cause a terrible financial hardship and that pre-existing conditions would be covered.
As of 2017, that assumption may no longer be valid, with the stated goal of a Republican president and GOP members of Congress to repeal and replace the ACA.
“Under the new regime, I would be a pre-existing condition,” LaCroix said in the spring of 2017. “I find that a really bitter pill to swallow, not only because it seems like I’m being penalized for a generous act. I had to be in a remarkable state of health, head to toe, to be able to donate. Statistically, I’m supposed to outlive people who have two functioning kidneys.”
LaCroix decided to donate after reconnecting through Facebook with her former therapist.
“I got engrossed in her page. I read about it. I called and said, ‘If I can do it, I’ll do it.’” LaCroix said. “As a therapist, she was like ‘It’s a big decision. Really think it over.’”
LaCroix donated her kidney in December 2016 after a yearslong process. While she wasn’t a match with her therapist, she was able to donate through a paired exchange program in which donor kidneys matching different recipients are swapped.
Some states offer incentives such as tax credits or paid time off for donating. LaCroix has been writing to lawmakers urging them to make such incentives more common.
In the meantime, she watches the battle in Congress over the health care bill. When the first round of repeal and replace passed the House, she went back to National Kidney Foundation and discovered her donation would indeed be considered a preexisting condition under the bill.
“It made me feel really angry. It also made me feel really fragile,” she said. “I’m sure it’s how people who had long had a preexisting condition had always felt. I feel like I’m a part of that now.”
