Dear Mrs Clinton...

You have tied yourself firmly to the "success" of the Affordable Care Act, and you hope that this will swing people to you in the upcoming elections.  Really, based on the results of the mid term election after that thing passed, I am not sure you should.  But if you fail to understand why someone would be unhappy with the law you stand behind, I'll go ahead and give you a real world example of the success that it has graced upon my family.

First, understand where my family stood before you pushed this law into being.  I had a good job and since I worked for a company that valued their employees, we had excellent health insurance.  I believe you and Mr Obama called this "Cadillac Coverage" and for some reason thought it was bad.  This is important, since my wife was disabled, my step-daughter is a high functioning autistic and I have diabetes.

After the passing of the ACA, we noticed subtle changes at our healthcare provider.  Tighter times with the doctor, unrealistic expectations with my wife's diabetic supplies (I am on oral medication) and a variety of other small things.  When we inquired, it was always blamed on changes that were being implemented to allow for the full ACA to come into effect.  This really impacted us because Medicare (remember, my wife is disabled) would only approve specific amounts of needles and insulin.  Priming the needle was not taken into account.  My wife used insulin pens, so if one did not have enough, an extra needle was used on the new pen.  Might seem minor to you, but it was a huge problem for us.

Then the year that it came into full effect, our costs doubled.  It was directly placed at the ACA's feet.  You see, when you passed that ball of suck and fail, you put nothing in there to actually control costs.  As such, my family took it in the shorts.  Thank you.

After my wife passed away, my costs didn't really go down much.  Then, my company had a reduction in force.  I was caught up in it, so despite over a decade of service, I was laid off.  While I got a very good severance package, the cost of COBRA coverage was astronomical.  As I could not afford that, I went over to the Covered CA site to see what they could do for me.  Turns out that they could do nothing.  It was as much for poorer coverage there as it would be to get COBRA.  So, I have a choice between rent and food or healthcare coverage.  My step-daughter is covered by the county, so I have none.

Now I am still unemployed, I have no reserves left from my severance. I have cashed out my 401k and maxed the few credit cards I had.  I am scraping by on unemployment.  And now, because I have no health insurance and cannot afford it, you are going to penalize me money I don't have using the IRS.  An amazing success for the ACA.

You never had my vote.  But I am hoping enough people have been graced with similar ACA success and that they remember it when they go to the polls.