The call from the pharmacy started routinely, but the condescending tone of the older woman delivering the news rocked my world. She said my prescriptions of Vyvanse, Zoloft and Trazodone would no longer be covered after my 26th birthday the following month.
“This is your parents’ insurance,” she said dismissively. “If you don’t have your own, we can’t fill your prescriptions.”
Those may not have been her exact words, but that was the gist. What I remember most was the crippling anxiety that came with her message. The next few weeks were torment. Counting down the days until my safety, my sanity, would expire.
The rational step would have been to figure out how to get health insurance. But I was already too paralyzed by anxiety to even drag myself out of bed. I rationed my medication, not knowing when I would get my next refill. I skipped days, cut pills in half, strategically suffering through the symptoms and only taking my meds when absolutely necessary.
This anguish was courtesy of policy.
Thanks to ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I was able to stay on my parents’ health insurance until the age 26. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in 2020, and no job I’ve had since has offered health insurance. Without coverage, I never would have known that I was living with four mental health conditions.
And after aging out of ObamaCare, citizens could turn to federally funded health insurance such as Medi-Cal, designed to cover lower income individuals. Medi-Cal is how I maintained access to the prescriptions I desperately needed. Unfortunately, the red tape involved made it agonizing. Some days I was in a stupor, too sluggish to do anything. I felt guilty for procrastinating, and taking away resources from someone “more deserving.” But eventually, I was safely covered.
Now, Medi-Cal is under attack.
President Donald Trump has promised to dismantle the ACA and replace it with what he calls his “Big Beautiful Bill.” That isn’t just a headline to me. This is an attack on my rights and the rights of millions of Americans. Medi-Cal, the program that keeps me medicated and steady, is funded and structured through the ACA. If it does fall, so will my stability.
Medi-Cal covers over 15 million lower-income Californians. Gov. Gavin Newsom has said Trump’s budget plan could cause more than three million Medi-Cal recipients to lose coverage. This is a daunting reality for many Americans, especially as the job market continues to spiral downward. Jobs with benefits remain scarce.
At 23, I was officially diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD, as well as generalized depression, generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Learning this would not have been possible without the ACA’s coverage protections. Without them, I might have gone undiagnosed for years — or worse, never gotten help at all.
Then in October 2023, I and the rest of the world were exposed to livestreamed genocide in Palestine. The deliberate violence and bloodshed on my feed caused my mental health to spiral lower than I thought possible. Every refresh was another explosion, another body, another child.
I couldn’t look away, but every image burrowed deeper into my mind. I stopped sleeping through the night. Stopped eating full meals. Even simple tasks like brushing my teeth felt impossible.
At my hotel job, I would scroll on social media and see 20-year-old Palestinian journalists and content creators film themselves losing everyone and everything they had ever known. Once, a customer came in berating me, demanding to know why he had two towels in his room instead of three. All I could think was, “You’re crying about towels, and a five-month-old baby in Gaza is trapped under rubble!”
I wanted to scream and tell the customer off. Instead, I gave him a dissociative nod.
While I was trying to process it all, the pharmacy’s call landed like a bombshell: the end of my healthcare.
I have coverage now, but I am anxiously waiting for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to come for me and my prescriptions.
I worry that without medication, I will regress into an emotionally dysregulated state and turn into a completely incompetent person. That my mental state will damage my professional and interpersonal relationships so severely that I could require hospitalization.
Living with ADHD, PTSD, anxiety and depression is a type of hell I would not wish on my worst enemy. Every day is a struggle, even with medication. Some days, I can push through the executive dysfunction. Other days, I’m trapped by my most traumatic memories, unable to escape from the past.
Medication does not solve everything, but it makes my symptoms much more manageable. I am fortunate enough to have a support system and to be in a better place now mentally than when I began this journey.
Without prescription coverage, I wouldn’t just be struggling — I’d be rationing again, spiraling again, maybe even hospitalized.
That’s the thing about policies: For some, they’re fodder for political discourse. They’re headlines for newspapers and debate shows. They’re talking points in a society divided along partisan lines. For people like me, they’re survival.
Policies directly impact people’s lives. Not having access to medication is far from trivial. Millions of Americans should not have to anxiously wait to find out whether or not they will get their prescription medications.
The next time you see Trump flippantly talking about a new policy, as if it helps people, just know the likelihood is someone will be adversely affected. Suffering at the hands of legislation. Lost trying to find a new way to live. Cutting pills in half, hoping to survive.
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Top photo: Donald Trump’s health care policies wreak havoc on the mental health of columnist Sabrina Hossain. (Photo courtesy of The White House)
Sabrina Hossain is the Opinions Editor for The Express. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @WritersBlock678.
