Montel Williams

Opinion contributor

On Halloween, the Trump administration’s administrator of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, made a joke on Twitter that the scariest Halloween costume would be “Medicare for All.”

As a Miami resident and a former longtime Republican, I’m not laughing. I’m voting, and I’m voting only for those who make solving our health care crisis a priority.

I was once a proud Republican. But on health care, the Republican Party has left me and the 130 million Americans under age 65 who have pre-existing conditions out in the cold, and I voted accordingly. I've always believed that health care was a right, not a political football to be used to appeal to a radical fringe.

However, the true tipping point for me wasn't one tweet or one policy change, but a recent personal experience.

A few months ago, while working out at the gym, I heard a loud pop in my head, followed by a wave of disorientation and tiredness. It was a cerebral hemorrhagic stroke. I was lucky that my wife was nearby to call an ambulance, and luckier still to make it out with my life after a 21-day hospital stay that began with a week in intensive care.

This wasn’t my first health issue, but for me, it was a revelation. A brush with death makes you count your blessings, and I realized that chief among mine is the care that I’m able to afford.

Your wealth should not decide your health

Almost 20 years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which has been a painful, chronic condition that I have managed to treat, albeit expensively. One of my daughters is a two-time cancer survivor. While I’m blessed to have the resources to protect myself and my family, most aren’t so fortunate.

Last week, I took part in a rally with the organization Protect Our Care and Florida congressional candidate Mary Barzee Flores at the Borinquen Medical Center to raise awareness about how and who the Affordable Care Act protects. Survivor after survivor at the event shared stories of harrowing illness and how they owe their life to the ACA.

Their stories are by no means unique. Miami has the highest concentration of Obamacare enrollees of anywhere in the nation at more than 360,000 people. And that doesn’t factor in the hundreds of thousands of South Floridians with pre-existing conditions.

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Despite these facts, we have Gov. Rick Scott and a Republican-led legislature who've stubbornly refused to lead by expanding Medicaid. The Republican nominee for governor, Ron DeSantis, actually once suggested that folks who can’t afford health care can seek it out “at the emergency room.” And even now, our Attorney General Pam Bondi has joined into a multistate lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

While some Republicans like Scott might pretend they’ve always supported protections for pre-existing conditions, actions speak far louder than campaign commercials.

The simple truth is this: My former party’s reckless obsession with gutting the ACA is a clear-and-present danger to as many as 130 million Americans, myself and my daughter included, who live with or have had a serious illness that counts as a pre-existing condition. In this country, and in this state, your wealth should not decide your health.

Republicans' reckless sabotage campaign

I’ve been proud to support conservative local lawmakers over the years, such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (with whom I am friends and whom I admire for her vote to protect the ACA), and my neighboring congressman, Rep. Carlos Curbelo, in whom I see the future I had always wanted for my former party. But this year, for my future, my kids’ future and my future grandkids' future, I voted the entire Democratic ticket for the first time in my adult life and am urging other voters to do the same.

Don’t get me wrong: The ACA is by no means perfect. There are problems with high deductibles and insurance rates. We deserve representation that will fix these problems in a bipartisan way — not irresponsibly take a sledgehammer to the entire policy for partisan gain without the slightest idea how to replace it.

If my former party would stop its deliberate campaign of sabotage, many of the problems with the ACA could be quickly remedied.

This November, I believe we will witness a wave of voters at the polls who are neither Republican voters nor Democratic voters but health care voters. Count me in as one of them.

Political independent Montel Williams, a 22-year veteran of the Marine Corps and Navy who served primarily as a special duty intelligence officer, went on to start the Emmy-award-winning "Montel Williams Show" that ran for 17 seasons. Follow him on Twitter @Montel_Williams.