title:  Meet The Girl Republicans Are Trying Like Hell To Kill (VIDEO)
text: Republicans are hell bent on repealing Obamacare. They don t care how many people it kills. After eight years of demanding the Affordable Care Act be repealed and replaced, the best they could come up with when they finally won the majority, was a plan that will kick 24 million people off of their health insurance. The proposed bill was especially cruel to the elderly, the sick, and the disabled. Thankfully, the American Health Care Act didn t make it past Thursday s House vote, but only because a significant number of Republicans didn t think it was cruel enough.This is Ashley, and she is one of the many people the Republicans are trying to put into an early grave.A few years ago, when she was only 22 years old, Ashley was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body s own immune system turns on itself and attacks various organs throughout the body. Ashley s case proved to be severe. Among other things, the Lupus has attacked her brain, which causes seizures.Her entire digestive system is paralyzed, a condition called gastroparesis. She is unable to eat or take any medications by mouth because it just sits in her stomach until it is eventually vomited back up several days later. She has had multiple feeding tubes surgically implanted, which allowed liquid nutritional supplements to be delivered directly into her intestines. But in Ashley, the gastroparesis has paralyzed her intestines too.Because of this, Ashley has relied on total parenteral nutrition (TPN) for more than two years   in other words, she is fed through an IV. She has had multiple ports installed in her chest over the years, along with a countless number of PICC lines. Anytime you see her, she will have her trusty backpack carrying her TPN pump which feeds her through a tube in her chest from the IV bag she lugs around.Just to make things fun, Ashley s body has decided to develop a blood clotting disorder that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose or identify. She has repeatedly had potentially fatal DVT s over the past few months, including a particularly dangerous one in her neck that developed even after she was placed on high doses of blood thinners.Now that you have a little background, and rest assured that this is only a small snapshot of her overall medical picture, I will get back to my point because this isn t a sob story. Ashley is a fighter and the only thing she needs less than pity is the GOP s  make America sick again  plan.Ashley is alive because West Virginia chose to take part in the Medicaid expansion. Republicans want to gut Medicaid, and West Virginia s budget is already pushed to the max. If there have to be cuts, expensive patients like Ashley will be the first to go and spending caps in the AHCA would do just this. Getting her treatments approved are already a nightmare. If the GOP gets their way, this girl will die. She won t live long enough fight it or look for other options. Without Medicaid, Ashley will die. Period.I would like to think that putting a face on this would compel a little compassion from the right, but Republicans don t give a f*ck about Ashley or any of the other sick Americans they are trying so hard to kill. After all, their only complaint about the GOP plan is that it isn t going to kill enough people.You can watch Ashley talk more about her illness here, via the Invisible Disability Project: Featured image via Facebook