If anyone is wondering why so many questions about the Affordable Care Act are being thrown at Amy Coney Barrett, there’s no need to look further than the fact that the ACA itself comes before the Supreme Court only a week after the election.

These last three weeks of the presidential campaign have been dominated by COVID-19 and its status as a preexisting condition for all those who have contracted the virus. In the Upper Midwest and now in the White House, we see that the virus has not in fact weakened or gone away. Even now the president continues in his refusal to do the basics: social distance, wear a mask, and follow the science — even as the people around him test positive and go into quarantine.

This pandemic needs a response that attends to our national health care needs. First and foremost, we need the ACA, and we need the Supreme Court to stand by it. Instead, the hearings threaten to upend it with an oppositional nominee even while our country has the worst COVID numbers of any developed country.

The current administration pursues an effort to overturn the ACA. Judge Barrett could well give them all the votes they will need to upend it in mid-November, with no plan to takes its place. As with the pandemic, Americans would be on their own to fend for themselves. Our lives and our health care depend on our vote. Reach out to senators and reach for your ballot.

Eileen Kreutz, Industry