When my sister Kimberly was two years old, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. While she was fighting for her life, my parents were fighting to protect their family.
Mom and Dad spent every dollar they had on Kimberly's medical expenses while she quickly exhausted her lifetime health insurance.
Kimberly died at the age of 21 and my parents spent years trying to pay off the debt she had incurred due to her medical expenses. No father should have to mourn the loss of his daughter while trying to make ends meet. This devastating experience taught me at a young age that healthcare is emotionally and financially challenging for many families. This sad truth propelled me into public service and fueled my fight to ensure that people like Kimberly have access to quality health care they can afford.
This deep experience has also influenced my work on the Affordable Care Act in Congress and my successful initiative to expand access to health care as governor of New Mexico, where I am proud to be the first Democratic Hispanic governor elected in the history of the United States.
Now, the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency seriously jeopardizes the progress we have made on health care and the economy. The Trump-Vance 2025 agenda would strip more than 4 million Latinos of their health care and undo the Biden-Harris administration's work to set the price of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. This would dramatically increase costs for countless Hispanics, who are about 60 percent more likely than white Americans to be diagnosed with diabetes.
We cannot afford another Trump presidency.
That's why I'm proud to support Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign. Harris clearly has the strongest record and best plan to protect health care and create economic opportunity for Hispanic families across the country.
This election will be very close and Hispanic voters could make the difference. We have the power to help determine whether our nation moves forward with Kamala Harris or retreats with Donald Trump, whose policies will deprive millions of health care and undo the historic economic progress made over the past four years.
I support Kamala Harris not only because of her record of fighting for all of us, but because she has clear plans to deliver for Hispanic communities. Harris grew up in a middle-class home as the daughter of a working mother. As a former McDonald's employee who worked through college, she knows the value of hard work. That is why, as President, she will build an economy of opportunity where, through hard work and ambition, Hispanic families have the opportunity to compete and achieve the American Dream without the burden of medical debt.
As Vice President, United States Senator, and California Attorney General, Kamala Harris has repeatedly protected access to affordable health care. In the White House, he played a key role in passing the Inflation Reduction Act that allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and cap the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors. As U.S. Sen. Harris cast the deciding vote to thwart Trump's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which protects access to health care for people with pre-existing conditions like Kimberly. As Attorney General, Harris helped Big Pharma earn more than $7 billion in fines, helping to return money to consumers.
As President of the United States, Harris will build on her long record of protecting health care to relieve medical debt for millions of Americans, reduce prescription drug costs with an annual cap on family medicine expenses, and expand tax credits to save Americans an average of $700. annually in health insurance.
The contrast between Harris' plans and Donald Trump's could not be starker, and it is Hispanic households that will gain or lose the most. President Trump has repeatedly attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act while lowering taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. As a candidate, he said he would “never give up” on repealing the ACA, although there are only “concepts of a plan” to replace it. His clear intent to exclude millions of Americans, including some Latinos, from accessing health care coverage is unconscionable.
Hispanic families don't need “plan concepts” for health coverage: we need a real plan. Only Kamala Harris' plan will keep millions of Hispanic families covered while providing the respect and dignity of a high-quality, affordable, and easier to navigate health care system.
If Trump succeeds in repealing the Affordable Care Act, Hispanic families will be excluded from the system we have fought for decades to be included in, and health coverage and the uninsured rate will increase. It jumped to 30 percent. This means healthcare costs for everyone are rising, and this has a cascading effect on smaller providers, rural hospitals, and others struggling to remain viable.
When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, Hispanics had the highest uninsured rate of any racial group in the country. Since then, the Hispanic uninsured rate has fallen more than any other group, falling from 32.7 percent in 2010 to 18 percent in 2022. Now all that progress is in jeopardy.
It is a risk that the American people, especially Hispanic families, cannot take. Many of us struggle with the same challenges my family faced: how to pay for the health care our loved ones need. For families who have so much at stake in this election, the choice is clear. Vice President Harris is a proven leader who will put our health care and our family's finances first.
Michelle Lujan Grisham is the 32nd Governor of New Mexico.
