http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/12/1384235/-See-man-hate-ACA-See-man-refuse-to-get-ACA-See-man-whine-that-he-can-t-get-ACA-when-he-needs-it?detail=emailmc
Yeah, that's right, I'll say it: Luis Lang is a fool and a hypocrite.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has a story about a guy in South Carolina named Luis Lang who's in a nasty situation due to a combination of bad timing, Republican cold-heartedness and, to be blunt, his own stupidity.
First, the backstory:
As the Charlotte Observer explains, Lang is a self-employed handyman who works as a contractor with banks and the federal government to maintain foreclosed properties. He was making a decent living, enough to be the sole breadwinner in the family. As the Observer puts it, Lang "he has never bought insurance. Instead, he says, he prided himself on paying his own medical bills."
So far, so good, although I'm not sure I understand how paying 100% of your medical bills instead of buying health insurance is supposed to be a source of pride. Did he also pay cash up front for the $300,000, 3,300 square-foot house which the Charlotte Observer says he and his voluntarily unemployed wife live in? If not, then how is getting a mortgage for your house (or a student loan, or an auto loan, or life/homeowner's/auto insurance) any more "shameful" than signing up for health insurance?
Anyway...
All seemed good until this February when a series of headaches led him to the doctor. Tests revealed that Lang had suffered a series of mini-strokes tied to diabetes. (It's not clear to me from the piece whether Lang knew he had diabetes earlier or whether that was the diabetes diagnosis as well.) He also has a partially detached retina and eye bleeding tied to his diabetes. The initial medical care for the mini-strokes ran to almost $10,000 and burned through his savings. And now he can't work because of his eye issue and can't afford the surgery that would save his eyesight and also allowing him to continue working.
I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but this is exactly why people buy insurance in the first place. The whole concept is that you shell out several hundred dollars per month when you're not sick or injured so that you'll have your medical bills covered in the event that you become sick/injured. He made a gamble that he'd never become so sick/injured badly enough that he wouldn't be able to afford 100% of the cost...and it finally caught up with him.
The difference between the tea party psychopaths in the clip above and sane people with a soul, of course, is that the sane people don't want to "Let Him Die!" even if the guy in question is a selfish, short-sighted jerk. Those of us with a soul will go as far as reasonably possible to make sure this guy doesn't bleed to death on the Emergency Room floor. That's exactly why the Affordable Care Act was passed in the first place: It may have serious flaws, but it does set up numerous provisions to help ensure that as many people receive decent, affordable healthcare coverage as possible.
However--and this is key--the person in question has to agree to use some of those provisions.
Now, it's very important to note at this point that without the Affordable Care Act, this guy would be utterly screwed. His income/assets are still too high to qualify for traditional Medicaid, and every insurance company would turn him down for coverage due to his pre-existing condition if they weren't legally required to let him sign up.
Thank goodness the Affordable Care Act is around, right? That means that 1) as long as he enrolls during Open Enrollment, the insurance company is required to let him do so; 2) if he needs some help, the federal tax credits are there to smooth things over; and 3) if his income drop moves him below the subsidy threshold, Medicaid expansion will take charge of his dilemma. Yay!!
Yeah, about that...
That’s when he turned to the Affordable Care Act exchange. Lang learned two things: First, 2015 enrollment had closed earlier that month. And second, because his income has dried up, he earns too little to get a federal subsidy to buy a private policy.
Yes, that's right. He's in South Carolina, remember? SC is one of the Republican-controlled states which refused to expand Medicaid, even though they wouldn't have to pay a dime for it the first few years and never have to pay more than 10¢ on the dollar after that. So #3 is out.
Number 2 is out because the law was passed with the provision that every state expand Medicaid. Since the Supreme Court allowed some states to refuse expansion but didn't change anything else in the law, the tax credits for private policies are still cut off at a higher income than Mr. Lang is now at...thanks to the SC Republican Party.
okay just wondering was this guy put in the republican jackpot of no insurance because of their denial to accept ACA and Medicaid expansion or was it the lies spread through the years by those same republicans that convinced him it was an abomination thereby putting him in a situation where misleading misinformation guided his decision and now any republicans coming to his rescue??? remember he could have purchased through the exchanges even though the republican governor refused the entire state, so who's really responsible, does that make him the stupid one ?????? republicans will probably say in unison "OBAMA", thank God we all are not under the spell.
