In 2006, I had a cancerous tumor removed from my brain, and developed a mild version of narcolepsy that requires me to take prescription medication every single day.

In 2013, I spent 55 percent of my $20,000 income from helping people with disabilities on healthcare. That included paying $1,203 each month for refills of my narcolepsy medication until I reached a $5,000 deductible.

Now, I only have a co-pay of $40 per month for twice as many of those exact same pills, even before I reach my $850 deductible. By the end of this year, I’ll have saved $44,400 on over five years thanks to the Patient Protections for preexisting conditions in the Affordable Care Act.

In late January 2017, I met with my Congressman, Morgan Griffith, to explain why the ACA’s Patient Protections are important for cancer survivors like me. I also explained how the GOP’s proposed changes (repealing the individual mandate for all citizens to get insurance, and ending required coverage of essential health benefits in all insurance plans) would effectively end those protections, and allow for preexisting condition discrimination again.

Yet by early May 2017, Griffith was smiling, and giving a big thumbs up in photos from the GOP’s celebration in the Whitehouse Rose Garden after the House passed its version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Fortunately, the late Senator John McCain killed that bill with his dramatic thumbs-down vote on the Senate Floor.

Anthony Flaccavento understands that a broader, more diverse subscriber pool would help disperse costs. While the “High-Risk Pools” Griffith promised me to help with my preexisting conditions would just concentrate the most expensive patients together, and remove any healthy subscribers to help mitigate our high medical costs. Those “High-Risk Pools” would result in another so-called “entitlement” program that Republicans would inevitably resist paying for in the long run.

Anthony listens; he hosted 100 Town Halls this year! And as a small farmer, and entrepreneur, he gets it. That’s why I will vote for Flaccavento for US Congress in Virginia’s Ninth District on November 6!

• Nathan Auldridge