I’ve written previously about my experiences with government benefits. I was on Medicaid as a child. I’ve been on welfare. I’ve lived in neighborhoods that people are warned about. My education was bought in part with grants and loans from the United States government. Today I have a degree, a job with a very good salary, and I own a home. By all accounts I’m a success story for government aid. But today I don’t want to talk about how government aid gave me a ladder to success, but the people for whom it is a lifeline to keep from drowning.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a man who will make $174,000 this year, went on CNN to talk up the Republican healthcare plan. He told America, “Rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.” There are so many things wrong with that statement, but I’m going to focus on one insidious idea: that people use government aid because they squander their money on iPhones and T-bone steaks and Cadillacs. It’s a compelling myth. It makes us feel good about our own financial choices. It saves us from feeling bad about people living in poverty. It allows us to feel like the universe is in some way fair – that you and I are successful because of our morality and righteousness, and those who are living in poverty are profligates who deserve it. The easiest stories to believe are the ones that let us feel like we’re better than other people. But just because something makes you feel good doesn’t make it true. Stories that make you feel good are how salesmen get you to make bad decisions. Tell someone he looks like the kind of man who knows how to impress and would never cheap out on his wife, and he just may walk out of the store with a diamond twice as big as he intended. These kind of stories have power even when they’re lies.

So let me tell you a different story, one that isn’t a lie even though some details have been changed for the sake of anonymity. A few years ago, when my spouse and I bought our house, we were getting rid of some furniture before we moved. One thing we no longer needed was a large chest freezer that we kept in the basement. We could have gotten a little money for it, but it was faster and easier to put it up on Craigslist for free, as long as we didn’t have to deliver it. These are the kinds of decisions you can make when you do not need to worry about $20. That weekend a man and his family came to get it. I’m going to call him Mitch because that’s a generic white guy name and because of the senior senator from Kentucky.

Mitch and his family arrived in a full-size van that was nearly as old as I am. At the time we were living in a place in the middle of the city.  It wasn’t a bad place to live, but it had seen better days, and those better days were probably before the First World War. Nevertheless, his daughter told me with wide-eyed sincerity that our home was beautiful.  Mitch and I talked while we tried to figure out the best way to move the freezer up from the basement. He gushed about how we were a blessing and thanked us several times. He talked about how times were tough and how hard it was to take care of a family. That’s when Mitch told us what his plan was for the freezer. He was going to buy meat in bulk from the meat packing plant, and the expiring clearance-priced food from the supermarket to save money. He didn’t have an iPhone 7 or a leased Audi. He was going to Safeway to buy expiring meat so he could freeze it and feed his family.

I know it’s tempting to say that stories like this are the exception and that most people in poverty just don’t work hard enough or save enough to escape. It’s tempting to believe the lie. There are many hard-working Americans whom Obamacare already does not do enough to help. They need more than a lifeline; they need the kind of ladder out of poverty I had. The Republican replacement – what they’re calling the World’s Best Healthcare Plan of 2017 in some kind of cruel joke – leaves these people behind completely. It takes the opportunity to buy healthcare and replaces it with a tax cut for multimillionaires. One surgery. One tumor. One car accident. That’s all it takes to lose everything, no matter how hard they work.