One of the invited guests watching the State of the Union message from the House gallery Tuesday night as a guest of the Democrats was a Republican businessman from South Florida.
Martin West served as the perfect example of what President Barack Obama hopes will turn into an army -- skeptics about the Affordable Care Act who turn into fans once they check it out, as the Orlando Sentinel reports.
West and his wife Melinda, who run a human-services and staffing company, say they saved a lot of money by enrolling in a health plan through the federal website, Healthcare.gov, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinelreported recently.
They had been paying a lot more for insurance in the past because Melinda West has a history of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Starting on Jan. 1, under the health law, insurers can no longer discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.