Every single day Jim Turk hosts his Twelve O’clock Shakedown on Facebook. Wearing tri-colored, peace sign sunglasses, Turk queues up some Bruce Springsteen and begins a 15-minute session of music and motion that is tailored to people with disabilities. 

Not only does Turk promote wellness each day during his live streams, but he is an outspoken advocate of bettering health care access for people disabilities. 

For people with disabilities, this upcoming election is crucial to ensure a continued, if not hopefully improved, health care system that guarantees affordable, non-discriminatory services and treatment. 

 Like 600,000 fellow Wisconsinites, Turk and the Shakedown members have at least one disability. While health care often gets complicated in terms of semantics, Turk boils it down to just wanting people to have full-access and coverage that won’t push them into poverty. 

“It’s silly that we live in the only developed nation that doesn’t provide that right. To me, that’s crazy,” Turk said. “You have people that are being denied, through no fault of their own.” 

People who have disabilities are more likely than people without disabilities to have issues accessing and affording medical treatment, according to NCBI. Private insurance often doesn’t cover all of the treatment people with disabilities may need, and it can be especially expensive for someone unable to work.

The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, sought to give low-income or unemployed Americans a public health care option. Additionally, the ACA expanded Medicaid coverage and established reforms like restricting pre-existing condition exclusion—which chronic disabilities would fall under. 

Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act give people with disabilities access to treatment and home-based services that private insurance won’t cover, according to Kiley McLean, an expert on developmental disabilities and policy. 

Going into the election, many advocates and people with disabilities want these programs to be expanded. Autumn Neugent, an advocate for people with disabilities and Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin 2019, hopes to see this election lead to fair and full health care access. 

“Like any team, you have to look at how the unhealthiest people are being treated,” Neugent said. “And make sure that the health care encompasses everyone, from our healthiest people to our unhealthiest people and our richest people to our poorest people—that everybody is getting the same access.” 

President Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 with his Make American Great Again promises. As for health care, he ran on the idea of “repeal and replace.” He would repeal the Affordable Care Act and create a program based on restoring state authority and free-market principles, according to Ballotpedia.

He eliminated the individual mandate portion of the ACA in 2017, but Trump’s goal is to replace it entirely. His plan advocates for competition between private insurance companies to keep prices low. It aligns with the stances of many Republicans such as Sen. Ron Johnson. 

“It [Affordable Care Act] was terrible and very, very expensive,” Trump said during a speech this September. “But, by far, the worst part of Obamacare was this thing called the ‘individual mandate’”

Trump claims he would still implement rules to protect people with pre-existing conditions—a category people with chronic disabilities fall under. However, the constant battles over the legality of the Affordable Care Act mean that the protective reforms in place are just as uncertain as overall coverage. 

His goals are met with worry by people with disabilities who have dealt with issues regarding coverage. A second term for Trump would be detrimental to people with pre-existing conditions, according to Neugent. 

“I cannot control the fact that M.S. has made me unable to work,” Neugent said. “I am no less than anyone. I just have a different set of circumstances.”

Since Trump’s 2016 victory, Wisconsin has elected a Democratic governor. Beating the incumbent Scott Walker, Gov. Evers has defended the ACA and fought to get Wisconsin out of the federal litigations against it. 

While Trump doesn’t have a concrete agenda or stance regarding people with disabilities, his desire to make cuts to and possibly repeal the ACA in its entirety is a plan in itself, according to McLean. 

Vice President Joe Biden, does have a plan on his website. In “The Biden Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities,” he stresses his support of expanding the ACA and Medicaid, as well as looking into specific elements that may harm people with disabilities. 

Self-advocate and former WPDD Board Member David Pinno believes that in this regard Biden’s plan is more ideal for those who have pre-existing conditions. 

“I’ve seen President Trump’s plan. I’m very scared of that plan,” Pinno said. “I don’t think he understands the severity of what it actually means to a person with a disability who has a pre- existing condition.”

The plan includes other goals like eliminating the SSDI benefit cliff, phasing out the subminimum wage, incentivizing businesses to hire people with disabilities and more. 

During a speech on June 25th, Biden criticized Trump’s stance. 

“Today, we’re in the middle of the worst global health crisis in living memory and Donald Trump will file in the Supreme Court today an attempt to strip away healthcare coverage from tens of millions of families in the United States,” Biden said. “Strip away their peace of mind, away from more than 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.”

Beth Allen, Vice President of Advocates of Diverse Abilities, feels her existence as a person with a disability has been politicized, and that Trump normalized disrespect toward marginalized groups through his behavior. 

“But I think that with Biden, there is hope,” Allen said. “It’ll show people that you aren’t the silent majority. You’re the loud minority.”

Allen acknowledges that the Affordable Care Act, like every law, has its flaws, but it has opened up doors for people with disabilities. 

“I think it’s important that we take this time to really consider what we believe human rights are, and I believe that health care is a right,” Allen said. “I think that Joe Biden exemplifies that, in that he was such a big part of the Affordable Care Act”