Jim Hoft—known to loyal readers as the Gateway Pundit—is asking for our prayers.

Hoft, who has serious health problems, has received a letter informing him that his health insurance has been cancelled because of ObamaCare.  I am going to quote a chunk of Hoft’s very distressing  post:

In August 2013 I became very sick with what I thought was a cold. After a few days I lost vision in my left eye and I checked into the hospital. I soon found out that what I thought was a summer cold was actually Strep bacteria poisoning my blood stream. The bacteria blinded my left eye, ate a hole through my heart, caused five strokes on both sides of my brain and forced the removal of my prosthetic left knee.

Dr. Lee was the surgeon assigned to perform open heart surgery. What was originally scheduled to last four hours ended up lasting twelve. My heart was severely damaged. Dr. Lee later told me the surgery was one of the most difficult of his career. He also said I only had a few days to live without the surgery.

Thanks to the excellent insurance I carried I was able to receive life-saving medical treatment at St. Louis University.

This week I found out I am going to lose my insurance. The company that carried me is leaving the Missouri market. I will have to find something else.

I am one of the millions who will be looking for new insurance. God willing, I will be able to keep my doctors at St. Louis University. I trust them.  They saved my life.  Please pray for me and the millions of working Americans who are going through this same ordeal.

Meanwhile, John Gisler, who was trying to purchase health insurance for his 45-year-old son, who suffers from a degenerative condition diminishing his ability to speak and affecting his coordination, has given up after 50 phone calls.

His son is covered through Utah’s high-risk insurance pool, but that ends Dec. 31, the same time the administration anticipates people enrolling into Obamacare-approved insurance plans. Because Gisler doesn’t want a coverage gap, he’s going to skip out on the $3,000 tax credit he could get through the Obamacare exchanges and buy from a local insurance broker.

“We’ve had three separate applications that failed to make it through,” Gisler said. “I have a notebook with all the calls I’ve made, maybe 50 or 100. It just goes on and on.”

Now he’s finished trying.

“We have a son who is critically ill,” Gisler told the Post. “We cannot take any chances. Not having insurance would, in no short order, lead our family to bankruptcy.”

Gisler is an example of people whose current plans will be canceled but are still unable to buy from the exchanges. These are the people the Post calls, “Obamacare’s biggest losers.” Dec. 23 is the last day to purchase insurance on the exchange to comply with individual mandate that begins Jan. 1, 2014.

When all is said and done, the main achievement of ObamaCare has been putting in jeopardy the health insurance (and, by extension, the lives) of millions of Americans. The administration, hardhearted enough to insist that what they face with ObamaCare is a mere PR problem, achieved an ideological goal (the seizure of the health industry by government) on the backs of millions of sick Americans.

Citizens told Democrats again and again that we didn’t want this. We told them in polls and at town hall meetings and at rallies, and the response we got from the Democrats, who were going to fulfill an ideological dream of theirs and make history come hell or high water, was that we were too dumb to know what was good for us.

The Democrats probably didn’t know that ObamaCare, the result of their hubris, was too big to work or, at the very least, that the administration didn’t have the smarts to do it. Now, many seem to dismiss the plight of people such as Jim Hoft and the Gisler. Such suffering, they admit, is unfortunate but part of a transition into something better. But every day brings bad news for ObamaCare and worse news for Americans who have had their lives upended by this ruthless act of political and ideological vanity.    

The only thing that stands in the way of the repeal of this law is the pride of the people who passed it without even bothering to read it. It would take an act of superhuman humility to admit that they were wrong. But people such as Hoft and the Gisler family are fighting for something more important than a seat in the House of Senate: they’re fighting for lives.