Lang is a self-employed handyman who works with banks and the federal government on maintaining foreclosed properties. He has done well enough that his wife, Mary, hasn’t had to work. They live in a 3,300-square-foot home in the Legacy Park subdivision valued at more than $300,000.
But he has never bought insurance. Instead, he says, he prided himself on paying his own medical bills.
That worked while he and his wife were relatively healthy. But after 10 days of an unrelenting headache, Lang went to the emergency room on Feb. 25. He says he was told he’d suffered several mini-strokes. He ran up $9,000 in bills and exhausted his savings. Meanwhile, his vision worsened and he can’t work, he says.
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.
Lang, a Republican, says he knew the act required him to get coverage but he chose not to do so. But he thought help would be available in an emergency. He and his wife blame President Obama and Congressional Democrats for passing a complex and flawed bill.
“(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,” Mary Lang said last week. “We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.”
So to recap, Lang refused to buy insurance because OBAMA TYRANNY, and when he needed to buy it, he couldn't because of the enrollment period issues, and when he then needed the safety net of Medicaid expansion, he lives in a red state where that OBAMA TYRANNY too is prohibited, so of course it's 100% Obama's fault he's about to lose his eyesight.
I do actually empathize with the man, but the fact of the matter is when you make the choice to do everything in your power to make sure the Affordable Care Act doesn't work, vote for people who will make sure the law doesn't work, and support other people making the choice to cripple the law so that it doesn't work, and then are furious when you discover that the law doesn't work, whose fault is that in the end?
There are a lot of people that Luis Lang could blame, but considering under the pre-Obamacare system that Lang never would have been able to get coverage for his eye surgery because every insurance company would have turned him down for diabetes as a pre-existing condition, maybe President Obama isn't the person he should be mad at.
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9 comments:
My bag of fucks is empty today, therefore I have none to give for this drowning-in-ODS idiot.
How about a rats ass
That bag is empty, too.
Pop quiz: if Ralph Nader hadn't run for President, and Al Gore had won - who thinks that the Supreme Court would have a Chief Justice Roberts? Who thinks that the campaign finance law would have withstood the Court's scrutiny? Etc., etc. and so forth.
Things would have been very different. But I remember hearing from some on the Left that worries about the Supreme Court were a Democratic "scare tactic" and it didn't matter who sat on the Court. Of course, the Left's disgust at Hillary ignores the fact that she would select judges who would be far better than the GOP's choices. At least Senator Sanders understands this, even if many of his supporters do not.
“(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,”
That is the perfect plan, excepting that things don't work that way - they have never worked that way - and sure as Jeb feltches goats they are never going to work that way so long as you Republicans keep obstructing reform. Jeepers, even a Firebagger is smarter than that. Even a Kossack even.
Where have we heard that song before? Sanders is OK, his supporters occasionally wake up to realize that their big tent allies are not in fact literal blood drinking ogres before they relapse into interminable bickering straight out of Life of Brian. The Judean People's Front! When I try to reason with one of these people, and explain that I actually do sincerely believe that keeping Republicans out of authority is a matter of the highest priority - impelled by the twin facts that Republicans always do a great deal of damage when ever they are in a position to do so and that the purity trolls appear to be hell bent on electoral sabotage yet again, no matter how deeply I believe that this is a spectacularly bad idea - he will as a matter of course pull out the "scare tactic" card, or the "bullying" card, or the "shoving Hillary down our throats" card. That last kind of gets under my skin, for I don't see how it's bullying or badgering or gloating or shoving of any kind to observe that HRC has a lot of support and a lot of money. If people were serious about a challenge, they should have thought about that back in the summer of 2013 when people were slitting each other's throats over the NSA and full blown paranoia over the alleged shills and disruptor trolls.
Because it is really odd that our national level bench is so dangerously shallow. Where are the rising stars of the Democratic Coalition who will lead us to victory in the next two decades? I'm not really seeing any, and I think that is a consequence of our obsession with anointing a leftie at each election cycle who is supposed to fix everything all on his own - which leads inevitably to disappoint, generally sooner rather than later, with no reserves of support to carry him through the tough times. As I keep saying (because I think it of primary importance) I think we leftists need to take the country from the bottom up, starting with dog catcher if need be and building our organisation over thirty years if need be to finish in triumph at the White House - rather than trying to begin at the White House and work down - although for strategic purposes it will be essential to cooperate with the Democrats (for thirty years if need by) to keep the Republicans out of power so they can't blow things up.
Of course this will take a lot of work,and we won't have much time to quibble over details like the structure of state sponsored child care under mature post-capitalism or the relative merits of anarchism vice libertarian socialism. Leave that to the alkies in the dives: we have a job to do.
F*cking naderite dead enders. You still run into them, sneering that Saint Ralph had nothing to do with making the election so close that Bush and his brother's political machine were able to steal it all. They play their silly ego games and walk away from the mess as if they had nothing to do with it.
Dumb Ass I have no sympathy for for the man he enabled his own demise by refusing to get health care insurance because his pride wouldn't let him do it. I am so sick and tired of these mofos with their white macho bravado attitude's putting everyone at risk by doing everything in their power to make a law that was made for people like this Dum-Dumb. Now he's in poutrage mode about not being able to receive it. He should pay three times as much. He should worship the ground Obama walks on just for being so goddamned stupid.
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