Harris will fight to protect health care for more than 4 million Hispanics

When my sister, Kimberly, was two years old, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. As she was fighting for her life, my parents were fighting to protect their family.

My mom and dad spent every dollar they had on Kimberly's medical expenses as she quickly maxed out her lifetime cap on health insurance.

Kimberly died at age 21, and my parents spent years trying to pay off the debt incurred from her medical expenses. No parent should have to grieve the loss of their daughter while trying to make ends meet. This devastating experience taught me at an early age that health care is an emotional and economic challenge for far too many families. This sad fact drove me into public service and fueled my fight to ensure that people like Kimberly have access to quality health care they can afford.

This profound experience also informed my work on the Affordable Care Act in Congress and my successful push to expand health care access as governor of New Mexico, where I’m proud to serve as the first Hispanic Democratic woman governor elected in U.S. history.

Now, the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency puts our progress on health care and the economy at grave risk. The Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda would strip more than 4 million Hispanics from their health care and roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s work to cap 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’s campaign for president. It’s clear that Harris has the strongest track record and best plan to protect health care and create economic opportunity for Hispanic families across the country.

This election will be extremely close, and Hispanic voters could make the difference. We have the power to help determine whether our nation moves forward with Kamala Harris or backward with Donald Trump, whose policies would rip health care access away from millions and decimate the historic economic progress of the past four years.

I’m supporting 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 mom. And as a former McDonald’s employee who worked her way through college, she understands the value of hard work. That’s why as president, she will build an opportunity economy where with hard work and ambition, Hispanic families have a chance to compete and a chance to achieve the American Dream without the burden of medical debt.

As vice president, as a U.S. senator and as California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris repeatedly protected access to affordable health care. In the White House, she played a critical role in passing the Inflation Reduction Act that let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices and cap the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors. As U.S. senator, Harris cast the deciding vote to thwart Trump’s attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act, protecting health access for people with pre-existing conditions like Kimberly. And as attorney general, Harris took on big pharmaceutical companies and won over $7 billion in fines –– helping return money to consumers.

As president of the United States, Harris will build on her long record of protecting health care by relieving medical debt for millions of Americans, reducing prescription drug costs with an annual cap on family medicine expenses and extending tax credits to save Americans an average of $700 per year on health insurance.

The contrast between Harris’s plans and Donald Trump’s plans could not be starker, and Hispanic families stand to gain or lose the most. President Trump tried repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act while cutting taxes for corporations and the richest Americans. As a candidate, he has said he will “never give up” on repealing the ACA, despite having only “concepts of a plan” to replace it. His obvious intention to exclude millions of Americans, including some Hispanics, from access to health care coverage is unconscionable.

Hispanic families don’t need “concepts of a plan” for health coverage –– we need a real plan. Only Kamala Harris’s plan will keep millions of Hispanic families covered while providing the respect and dignity of a quality health care system that is more affordable and easier to navigate.

If Trump succeeds at repealing the ACA, Hispanic families will be left out of a system that we fought for decades to be included in and health coverage and the uninsured rate would skyrocket to 30 percent. That means everyone else’s health care costs go up and that has a cascading effect with smaller providers, rural hospitals and others struggling to remain viable.

When President Obama signed the ACA into law in 2010, Hispanics had the highest rate of uninsured of any ethnic group in the nation. Since then, the rate of Hispanic uninsured has declined more than any other group, dropping from 32.7 percent in 2010 to 18 percent in 2022. Now all that progress is at risk.

It’s a risk that the American people, and especially Hispanic families, can’t take. Too many of us are struggling with the same challenges my family grappled with –– how to pay for health care their loved ones need. For families with so much at stake in this election, the choice is clear. Vice President Harris is the proven leader who will put our health care and our family’s finances first.

Michelle Lujan Grisham is the 32nd governor of the state of New Mexico.