Erin Meredith, a fifth-generation Republican who lives in Austin, was no fan of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which she considered just another wasteful government handout. She didn’t sign up for a health plan until late last year, when she felt she had no other choice.
By then, Meredith, who is 37 and has two children, had gotten divorced and lost the insurance provided through her husband. Her new job, as an office manager for a roofing company, didn’t offer benefits. About the same time, she learned that her headaches and fatigue were the result of a rare condition that affects the oxygen level in her blood. She couldn’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on doctor’s visits, and her desperation slowly turned to panic.
In November, at a friend’s urging, Meredith looked for a health plan on the federal online marketplace. With an income of about $30,000 a year, she discovered she qualified for a government subsidy of $132 a month. Her premium would be $89 a month.
Now that she has coverage, she doesn’t want to lose it. “I can still feed my kids and put gas in my car,” she said. “I’m not trying to go to Cancun or carry a Michael Kors bag. I drive a 2009 Mazda and I’m just trying to make it in my little apartment and not be on government assistance.”
Sorry Erin, according to the Republicans in your state of Texas, you never wanted affordable health care, you never wanted subsidies to make it affordable to you and your family, and you are now nothing more than a welfare queen to them.
Welcome to being one of "those people".
“If they’re not going to participate in Obamacare and I’m not going to have these financial benefits, which will force me to pay $220 a month for coverage, do you know if Greg Abbott, our governor, has any plan to offer something comparable?” Meredith asked in an e-mail. “I understand and support his efforts to put Washington back in its place. I just don’t want that to come at the cost of hard-working Texans and their ability to maintain medical coverage.”
You're no longer a "hard-working Texan" anymore. You gave up that status when you decided that the federal government was no longer your enemy, and that it could ever "help" you. You're a welfare cheat on Obamacare. You might as well be a Democrat, dear.
And if King v Burwell goes bad, your health insurance premiums will triple, and your Republicans will not lift a finger to fix it.
Count on it.
It's always a shock for a lifelong Republican to find out that you've been helping someone saw off the branch that you're sitting on. Yes, once one has a bit of bad luck, it's too late to realize that those stories about living the good life on welfare were all lies, a con seeking to steal the safety net out from under you by telling you that only those other people would be affected.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's like a bar mitzvah or a bath mitzvah: Today I have become The Other.
I am not a greedy man. In my wildest dreams, I clock out at 67 with a million and a half stashed away in index funds so that I might plausibly die in comfort before the scheckels run out - the residue of a life spent in faithful uncomplaining service, thanks to the miracle of compound interest and the Clinton Prosperity.
ReplyDeleteWhich is looking pretty unlikely.
So when I get those emails, warning that the Russians and the Chinese and the Bulgarians and the Tongans are probing our network, I sometimes wonder in an idle moment what might happen if I were to accidentally click on one of those letters from Citibank that don't quite look right.