Ashley Walton was 25 when a mole on her back turned out to be melanoma. She had it removed, but three years later she discovered a lump in her abdomen. She was then unemployed and uninsured, …. Every company rejected her.

By the time Walton finally sought medical help, the melanoma had spread to her brain, lungs and elsewhere. And she eventually became eligible for California’s Medicaid program, which had been expanded under the Affordable Care Act. Two major surgeries, radiation and immunotherapy did not cure the cancer — but did beat it back.

She credits her survival to the ACA. Without it, “I would likely be dead, and my family would likely be bankrupt from trying to save me,” she said. Her greatest concern is that Republican assaults on the law will imperil that coverage.

“For cancer survivors, we literally live and die by insurance,” Walton said.

“People are scared out of their minds,” said 34-year-old Erin Price-Schabert, who seven years ago was treated for breast cancer. She frets whether that history would make her “uninsurable” in the individual market if she were to leave her job.

Indeed, many people described a kind of existential dread that matches their fear of cancer.

House Republicans have called for major changes in federal subsidies, which have helped the vast majority of people with ACA policies afford their plans. They want state high-risk health insurance pools for people with big medical bills.

Herbert Malamut of Southampton, N.J., is on edge. He remembers the old insurance pools, …  “Those pools were poorly funded and had high premiums and skimpy benefits,” said Malamut, 61, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2012. “I don’t know why we would go back to them.”