One member's story of the Affordable Care Act's benefits

The Affordable Care Act has been a windfall for English professor Valerie Cullin, who is an adjunct professor at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Mich., and a member of the Adjunct Faculty Organization/AFT at the college. "I can sleep at night because I have this coverage," she says.

This is Cullen's second year on Obamacare. "Before that, I paid for healthcare myself—$500 a month. I'm not sure how I was able to do it, but I did," she says. Now, Cullin pays $57 a month for health insurance; she says her new coverage is better because it includes vision.

A single mother with two sons in college, Cullin began teaching at Henry Ford in 2010. At the time, she worked two jobs and ran her own cleaning company to make ends meet. "I cleaned toilets every night to pay for my car, college tuition and healthcare."

The cleaning work eventually took its toll on Cullin, and she shuttered the business. "I couldn't do it anymore; the work was getting to be physically impossible."

Fortunately, she was able to sign up for healthcare coverage through the ACA. "It afforded me the opportunity to quit cleaning and working at multiple jobs, so that I could live on what I was making as an adjunct.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld major portions of the law through its June 25 decision in King v. Burwell, Cullin was worried she would lose the subsidy that makes her coverage affordable, noting that if the court's decision was not favorable, she would have "to go back to square one."

Now that the law has a secure legal footing, Cullin plans to encourage her sons to apply for their own insurance through the ACA. "We'll all be covered, and perhaps my insurance rate will be even less."

[Adrienne Coles]