Sydney Macha: How ACA Coverage Protects Her Health and Her Future

Sydney Macha grew up in Derby, Kansas, but has lived in Wichita for the past five years. She has worked as a hairstylist and nail technician since 2017, specializing in vivid colors and bold cuts. Outside of her salon, she paints, fosters animals and helps local rescues.

When she lost coverage under her father’s insurance years earlier than expected, she suddenly faced life without health insurance. “I very suddenly got thrown into, oh, you’re just not going to have health insurance. Good luck,” she said. Through the Affordable Care Act marketplace and with the help of an insurance broker, she found a plan she could afford. Thanks to tax credits, her monthly premium is only $13, “which is pretty damn good,” she shared.

At the same time, she needed surgery for a cyst in her wrist that threatened her ability to work. The ACA has covered life-saving care. “I absolutely had to get it removed. And doing that without insurance was going to be impossible really. I thankfully was able to get ACA [coverage] and was able to have that surgery and continue doing my job.”

Her need for coverage extended far beyond just the one surgery. Her plan covered a tilt table test that otherwise would have cost over $6,600, a brain MRI, neurology and cardiology specialists, and physical therapy for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It pays for her migraine medications, which cost about $15,000 a month without insurance. “Losing my meds would pretty much make me completely bedridden with migraines. If I don’t have my medication on, or even if I miss one dose, I become paralyzed in half of my body from a type of migraine called a hemiplegic migraine.”

Her coverage also helped when she got COVID. The illness dropped her potassium to dangerous levels and nearly stopped her heart. Reluctant to go to the ER because of costs, she only went after her doctor insisted. “Your oxygen is at 40 percent. You are barely conscious. Go,” she recalled him saying. The hospital visit and treatments would have bankrupted her without insurance, but even with coverage she paid thousands out of pocket and lost weeks of income while recovering.

The stakes for Sydney are high, especially if tax credits were reduced or eliminated. “I just wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance. I would probably be kicked off of it. I wouldn’t be able to take my meds anymore or see any of my specialists.” Without coverage she would likely lose her business and be forced to rehome her animals. She knows the psychological toll would be just as devastating. “It would definitely worsen my depression, especially because I could not get those meds. I would be very anxious all of the time about doing anything really.”

Sydney also thinks about the bigger picture. “Eventually you’re going to see probably mass disabling effects from people that could have gotten preventative care, but they didn’t. And now they have advanced stages of whatever disease that could have been prevented that now they’re either going to die from, or they’re going to need to be on disability from.”

Sydney wants her lawmakers to know that cuts to coverage across the nation will have devastating impacts. “Not only is it going to kill people they don’t know, it’s going to kill their family. It’s going to kill their children. It’s going to kill their grandchildren. Everyone needs health care. Everyone needs access to a doctor and taking that away just either kills people, puts them in a situation where they commit suicide, or they wind up houseless.”

For Sydney, the ACA is more than a program. It is the difference between living with dignity and facing collapse. “Just the general importance of health care for everyone, not just disabled people, not just healthy people, not for children, not just for elderly, for everyone, because everyone gets sick at every point in their life and it needs to be accessible or it’s just going to end up in mass death.”