For many in this nation, including my nine year old grandson Jeremiah, health care coverage is a matter of life and death. Will the Court strike down the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) including the provision that provides health care insurance for American’s like Jeremiah with pre-existing conditions coverage?

My grandson Jeremiah Mohamed has the congenital heart defect Tetralogy of Fallot. Max Page (Little Darth Vader) had open heart surgery to replace his pulmonary valve on June 14, 2012, because he too has Tetralogy of Fallot.

He has had three open heart surgeries. His first surgery at three weeks of age was performed at the hospital where Jeremiah was born Advocate Hope Children’s located in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

For the second year in a row, Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital has been listed among the nation’s 50 top pediatric hospitals for cardiology and heart surgery and, for the first time, rated a national leader in neonatology in U.S News and World Report’s Best Children’s Hospitals 2012-13 rankings, which were released the first week in June.

I was in the room when Jeremiah was born and has been present during his three operations. The cost of the first open heart surgery in 2003 was approximately one million dollars. During his first two years of life he was hospitalized 47 or 48 times and I was at the hospital visiting him most if not all of those times.

Jeremiah is nine years old and he is alive today because his mother HAD good health insurance. According to Jeremiah’s doctors he will need another open heart surgery between the ages of eleven to thirteen.

I love both of my grand boys but they aren’t better or different than any of this nation’s children. All of our children and grandchildren deserve the same opportunity to have access to the quality health care received by Max Page and Jeremiah. In fact very American deserves to have affordable health care as a right and not a privilege.

Vera Richardson

Preview of my book “Screwed by Former Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer” reveals the early years of my racial poverty stricken life in Florida.

Preview additional pages of book that address my employment discrimination experience