Mangakas Without Medicine II

On September 18, 2008, a couple of months before Barack Obama, whose signature accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), was elected, I wrote a post entitled "Mangakas Without Medicine" discussing the pre-ACA travails of webcomic authors having a child in a birth that had some complications. Some of what I noted in my previous post is still true:

In Japan, they call a comic book author a Mangaka, and many of the highest income earners in the country write comic books. In the U.S., however, life as a mangaka is tougher. Most are young, often about to get married or just starting families, and cobbling together sufficient health care is a struggle.

The author of the webcomic "Rise from Ashes", who goes by Nim (a.k.a. Madeleine Rosca), recently had a very similar experience, which she explained cartoon style. 

There were financial issues even post-ACA, for her, but the bitterness and hopelessness felt by the Mankagas in 2008 just wasn't there with the same intensity. It is better now than it was before the ACA, especially for self-employed people like my family and that of most Mankaga (many of whom are also working poor or lower middle class economically, which is another group that has been helped tremendously by the ACA).

A return to the bad old days pre-ACA would be a horrible thing.