I don’t normally post about the situations of individual people because I just don’t find those stories very useful in understanding the big picture. I’ve always maintained that anecdotal stories are not evidence of anything other than what someone perceives they saw at a specific moment in time. More often than not, they’re completely fabricated bullshit, created to advance a narrative that can’t be advanced by using facts. That’s why I always insist on data.
I imagine that by now you intuit a story of an individual that I’m going to share with you in order to advance a narrative. You would be correct. There will, however be no hypocrisy on my part if you stick with me.
So there’s a retired sheriff in Arizona who has fallen on hard times. He and his wife both suffered some major medical issues within weeks of each other. At this point, you should be thinking, "Good thing they’re in Arizona, where the medicaid expansion component of Obamacare was embraced by the governor, resulting in a 4% drop in the rate of uninsured because affordable coverage is now available to Arizonans." Yes, being in a state that took the medicare expansion would be a good thing, if you weren’t opposed to Obamacare, and didn’t get yourself any insurance.
Here’s what the hero of my little story had to say about Obamacare;
The States can stop every bit of it! That’s right, the individual States can stop "Obamacare" and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and "big brother" tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hamshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Healthcare as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say "No!"
So now he’s a massive pile of medical debt that’s growing, and a long road to recovery ahead of him but thank god he didn’t let big brother force him into taking responsibility for himself! So what do you do when you’re an irresponsible man in his 50s or 60s who didn’t think that insurance was a thing that you might need? Panhandle on the internet, of course! He set up a Go Fund Me page to beg people to donate to his irresponsible ass so that he can pay those medical bills he didn’t have to incur. He’s raised a little over 16k in almost five weeks. I’m pretty sure he’s nowhere near raising what he needs to pay for just his heart surgery, let alone the hospital stay and ongoing care that he needs.
We’ve seen this movie before with Ron Paul’s freedom loving campaign manager, Kent Snyder who was in exactly the same situation. He also tried to panhandle his medical bills away, subsequently leaving his mother with $400,000 in medical bills to deal with. So it seems like the panhandling thing doesn’t really work as well as insurance does.
This jackass former sheriff, like Ron Paul’s campaign manager has a higher profile than most people, and can therefore raise more money than the average middle aged couple can. The jackass sheriff is an oath keeper so he’s got a community of racist vigilantes he can tap, and an active member of the ammosexual community so he also has those whackadoodles to hit up. And all of that community activism probably hasn’t raised enough money to pay for just the medications that were administered to him in the hospital. To be fair, I don’t know that for sure, but I’m making an educated guess based on medical bills I’ve seen posted online.
So either his kids, who clearly won’t be going to college will be paying his and his wife’s medical bills for their entire lives, or everyone else in Arizona will be paying them. But yay FREEDOM! No jackbooted government thug told him he had to do the responsible thing by getting the affordable insurance they made available to him, and that’s what’s important here!
I did a quick search for plans in Arizona. I looked in Phoenix, which should be the highest priced area in the state. I put in a household income of $80,000 for a family of four (that would be 30k above the median household income, but I’m trying to get the highest premiums I can). I was trying to put in an income that didn’t qualify for a subsidy but apparently an income of 80k for a family of four still gets you a premium subsidy of $146.05 per month so we’re going to go with that. The cheapest plan is a bronze level HMO which costs $541 per month after the subsidy. So that’s $6,492 in annual premiums. This plan has a $10,000 annual deductible, with an annual out of pocket maximum of $13,200 (the maximum allowable by Obamacare). So had the jackass sheriff gotten himself some insurance, he and his wife would have been on the hook for a total of $19,692 for her medical issue and his heart surgery.
That’s enough about this irresponsible asshole. Let’s get back to what’s really important: me. I promised you that I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite by sharing the type of anecdotal story I always reject from others. This story demonstrates the foundation for how and why Obamacare works for all of us, and is therefore not anecdotal. It’s one of the actual data points used in the mathematical analysis upon which Obamacare is based.
The subsidies that some claim they’re paying for would total $1,753.00 per year for jackass sheriff. The lowest estimate I’ve ever seen for the premium surcharge on everyone with insurance, to cover the uninsured is about $400 per year, for an individual or $1,000 per year for a family. The smaller the number of uninsured becomes, the smaller that hidden tax placed on those with insurance gets. That’s where the savings are coming from, and that’s how it’s possible for you not to be paying for anyone else’s insurance coverage. Those surcharges cost more than the subsidies do.
This freedom loving asshole is going to foist a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills on every single insured person in the country. The good news for Moochy McFreedom is that he can still get insurance to cover future bills, since he can’t be denied insurance for his preexisting insurance. Thanks to Obamacare, even being an irresponsible dumbass won’t prevent you from obtaining health coverage.
I don’t know if this asshole has reflected on the error of his ways or not, but I wanted to share his story to serve as both a cautionary tale, but also to let you know that Obamacare is the best way we have at this point, to insure that you’re not paying for anyone else’s health insurance. Well, anyone other than Sheriff Richard Mack and his family of freedom loving deadbeats.
