Pittsburgh public health advocates attend Affordable Care Act event at White House

Two public health advocates from Pittsburgh attended a White House ceremony Tuesday celebrating the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.

Amy Raslevich, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, and Adrianne Sapienza, a Pitt alumna and diabetes educator at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, both received invites last week.

Sapienza, a Type 1 diabetic, wrote an emotional letter thanking President Biden after he spoke about the high cost of insulin during his State of Union address.

“The last thing that people with diabetes should worry about is the cost of their insulin,” said Sapienza, 26.

When she received her White House invitation last week, she initially thought it was spam mail. She described the event as surreal.

Former President @BarackObama surprised advocates & beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act with a call to honor the plan's 12th anniversary — watch the heartwarming conversations here

(with @ProtectOurCare) pic.twitter.com/g96yTt4n9V

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 23, 2022

President Obama, who signed the Affordable Care Act into law, was on hand for the event as Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to continue looking for ways to expand availability of health care.

Raslevich, 50, was working in health policy in 2017 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“It could have devastated my family financially,” she said. “I could have lost my insurance, but I didn’t, so since then I’ve been doing advocacy work.”

That advocacy work led her to meet then-candidate Biden in 2020. Then, last week, she was one of three people in the country who received a surprise FaceTime call from Obama.

“It was, ‘Can you do a FaceTime call?’ and I just stopped breathing,” she said, adding that she received an email a few days after the FaceTime call inviting her to the White House. “Honestly, I thought it was an April Fools’ prank.”

Both women said they have worried each time the Affordable Care Act faced legal challenges.

Sapienza, who is in the process of becoming a nurse practitioner through Duke University, told a story of how a late insulin shipment when she was a child led to her parents paying $800 out of pocket for one vial.

“I’ve been lucky, but I know not everyone is like that,” she said. “This Affordable Care Act, I hope, is a step in the right direction. I feel it will be because health care is a right and not a privilege.”