This is a proposed political ad for our upcoming election to be paid for by a proposed political action committee named Pre-Existing Conditions Political Action Committee (PEC PAC).

PEC PAC commercial — Take One.

Men of Iowa, protect the health care of your family and friends. Every two-year or four-year or six-year election cycle, the Republicans pull the term pre-existing conditions out of the campaign box as a way to show they want to protect the health care of Iowans. Yet, like Christmas decorations after the holiday, that term after each election gets placed back into the campaign box until the next election and is otherwise forgotten.

Then the Republican U.S. House members vote time after time against Obamacare (which, at its core, is the protection of individuals with pre-existing conditions), or the Republican Iowa Legislature votes to allow an Iowa insurance company to sell a policy that discriminates against people with pre-existing conditions, or Republicans sue to invalidate Obamacare so millions of Americans and thousands of Iowans will lose their Medicaid coverage.

Your daughter may have asthma, your mom may have diabetes, and your aunt may have high blood pressure; these conditions do not go away with the coming and going of an election. If they are not of Medicare age, these and other Iowans have to deal with an insurance environment that is rigged against people with pre-existing health conditions.

The human condition guarantees that some, and in fact most, of us will acquire pre-existing health conditions eventually.

These diseases persist and, oftentimes, progress. Equally tragic is that, when individuals lack health-insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions, they do not receive their preventive mammograms, Pap smears and colonoscopies. Thus, we now have additional cases of breast cancer, cervical cancer and colon cancer that these people cannot pay to have treated.

Iowans, you know the realities of this world — the collection boxes for children and others with cancer or organ failures at the counters of our rural convenience stores; the posters stapled to telephone poles out in the country that are pushing low-cost, worthless health insurance; and the stories of necessary medications for these conditions increasing in cost by double-digit rates of inflation each year.

These realities are worsening with the unemployment brought on by the COVID crisis. These realities will worsen even more with the total overturn of Obamacare, which will be determined by the Supreme Court just after the election.

Iowans know that Trump lies; Iowans know that Trump does not care for lives — whether those of Ukrainians in Ukraine, Kurds in Syria, a U.S. national journalist in Turkey, Puerto Ricans in post-hurricane Puerto Rico or COVID patients dying in Democratic-led cities; Iowans know that Trump does not believe in science.

As long as they believe that Trump’s lies, lack of caring and disdain for science do not affect their lives, some Iowans seem willing to support him.

The rub for these Iowans is how Trump and his Republican Party handle health care. They have sided with big corporations — insurance and pharmaceutical companies — and with small-business groups that do not want a mandate for their members in regards to insuring their employees.

Similar to the use of the term pre-existing conditions — only in times of election — President Trump has said he has a plan for health-care coverage for this election. Just like the promise he made in the presidential election four years ago, it’s another Christmas decoration.

These actions of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party in general have harmed and will harm even more the health of Iowans: our family, friends and neighbors.

Obamacare created the opportunity for groups of citizens — cooperatives — to form health-care insurance companies to provide reasonably priced yet good health benefits to their members in the traditions of grain co-ops or the original idea of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield health-insurance entities.

Iowa formed one of these cooperatives, called CoOportunity Health. It was mocked and denigrated by Iowa Republicans. Despite a lack of support for CoOportunity Health and, in general, for health Exchanges as a way for individuals to acquire health-care access, CoOportunity greatly exceeded expectations, signing up 120,000 Iowans and Nebraskans for health coverage.

In the first three months, 24 of these members put in requests for major organ transplants. President Reagan chided welfare “queens” for taking advantage of welfare; I do not think these  24 people were trying to abuse the system with these requests. These were fellow Iowans dying and asking for replacements for their hearts, lungs, kidneys or livers.

For many reasons, CoOportunity failed. Among those reasons were the lack of support by the state of Iowa’s Republican-controlled government and federal efforts to undermine this alternative to the private health-insurance system. These federal efforts were led by large health-insurance companies and by Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who will one day again by in Iowa running for president. A federal court recently ruled that cooperatives such as CoOportunity Health were illegally cheated out of federal monies designed to protect them in their first years of operation.

In war-torn areas of Central Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, the country of Poland — which had been invaded and occupied several times by different countries — was taken over and subdivided by Russia, Prussia and Austria. In one partition, codified in the Treaty of 1797, these three countries tried to erase the nationalist memory of Poland by prohibiting the use of the word Poland in what had become parts of Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Political ads become more despicable every year; this year is no exception. Given the Republicans’ utterly cynical hypocrisy of touting the protection of individuals with pre-existing conditions during the election and then totally undermining the concept at all other times, I propose prohibiting the use of the term in Republican ads during campaigns.

We do not need promises; we need results. We do not need campaign decorations; we need action.

When you see or hear the words pre-existing conditions in a Republican ad, speech or debate performance, you should hug your loved ones who live with asthma, diabetes or high blood pressure and try to protect them. I guarantee the Republicans will not care about them nor protect them after you have voted.