Obamacare Saved This Woman’s Life—and Her Farm

After battling two brain tumors and breast cancer, Tina Hinchley still milks 130 cows twice a day. Not many people have jobs that are as physically demanding as Tina Hinchley’s. With her husband and four children, Hinchley, 51, milks 130 cows twice a day and works the corn and soybean fields on her family’s 2,500-acre farm in southeastern Wisconsin. To keep things running smoothly, Hinchley says the whole family needs to be healthy and strong. But like everyone else, sometimes farmers get sick.But Hinchley’s symptoms got so bad that she could no longer work in the barn, so her children had to pick up the slack, each of them milking dozens of cows before catching the school bus at 6:45 a.m. When she finally went to the clinic, the doctor immediately ordered CT scan, which revealed a brain tumor. She was scheduled for surgery right away. The surgeon removed the tumor, which turned out to be benign. But then the bill came: $187,000. Hinchley and her husband thought that maybe they would have to sell off their land. They ultimately scraped by, but Hinchley worried constantly. “When we don’t have health care, it’s scary,” she told me. “There is always the fear of: ‘If something happens, we could lose the farm.'”So in 2012, when the Affordable Care Act went into effect, Hinchley signed up for insurance right away.That decision may have saved her life. In 2013, Hinchley was diagnosed with another benign brain tumor as well as breast cancer. It was an extremely difficult time for the family, but having health insurance lightened the burden. “It was just an ease,” Hinchley said.