Posted on 01/18/2014 4:03:19 AM PST by Kaslin
David Kurtz of the lefty website TPM -- to his credit -- published an email he received from a young reader living in New York City. The 32-year-old correspondent wrote that much to his chagrin as an ardent backer of the president and his unpopular healthcare law, he's unable to afford its price tag. He suggests that his personal situation exemplifies the broader problems the program will have attracting the participation of young, healthy people:
I'm a 32 year-old healthy male that wants, but can't afford, Obamacare. I think the law is a step in the right direction, it just doesn't go far enough to capture my peers in large numbers. Let me offer my situation: I earn 55,000 a year working in a restaurant, though I have a Masters Degree. I live in Brooklyn. I earn too much to qualify for assistance with healthcare, so my premium is $308/month. My apartment rent is $1400/month, student loans are just under $800/month, I pay around $200/month in credit card bills, $100 for a cell phone, and $50 for car insurance. Then we have food, movies, metro cards, etc, etc ... Run the numbers, where do I find room for another $308/month??? I've been off my parents insurance for 8 years. I've been to the doctor less than 5 times in those years, for a total cost of under $500. It's hard for me to justify spending almost $3800 a year on a bronze plan when that's more than 7 times what I've paid over the last 8 years! And even spending that much, I've still got a large deductible to cover. I know I'm not getting any younger, but man, these numbers are hard to swallow, much less get excited about!
Many TPM readers replied angrily, lecturing "TC" about his life choices, questioning his story and motives, and ordering him to suck it up and shell out the cash. A sample offering (content warning):
Never written in before, but I call bullshit on TC. He has plenty of money to afford health insurance, but doesn't think he needs insurance, and obviously doesn't care enough about making the program successful to sign up. Really it's no better than a Tea Party response - I don't need no stinking health insurance, and if something does happen I'll just go to the emergency room. With friends like that, the opponents of Obamacare won't have to do much at all.
@guypbenson @gabrielmalor All three categories of reaction overlook that their reactions don't eliminate TC and people like him. Just Karl (@justkarl) January 16, 2014
Exactly. No amount of scolding and gnashing of teeth will change the fundamental flaws of this law. If Obamacare's prices are sufficiently expensive to chase away someone like TC, who is strongly ideologically disposed to sign up, corralling the attention and dollars of the ambivalent and/or skeptical masses will be a much heavier lift. Dollars and cents cannot be spun away. Reality has intruded on Obamacare advocates' fantasies. This challenge helps explain Obamacare's paltry youth participation rates to date (don't forget that actual enrollment numbers remain shrouded in incompetence and mystery), a phenomenon that undermines the law's financial model. Imagine how young people will react if this Obamacare pipe bursts within the next year. Krauthammer:
Krauthammer's Take: Healthcare.gov Insecurities 'a Disaster Waiting to Happen'
Indeed. The $100/month phone takes a lot of sympathy away from this dweeb.
Call your Governor and elected, demand they stop the monetary hemorrhaging by shutting this Very Bad Socialized Medicine Bill DOWN!! As long as Congress and Senators won't and don't have to buy Obamacare, why on earth should any American
They were destitute. They even had to drink Whiskey In The Jar.
The Left invariably winds up eating their own. Perhaps they can start by eating themselves this time.
Hey, young lib, we tried to warn you; you would not listen. Live with it!
Lady fingers are the best!!
Yeah, but could he have gotten that restaurant job without his masters degree? I wonder what his field is. Perhaps something with the word “studies” in it?
I have 30 year old twin sons who are single, students, and, as part time/hourly workers, not presently covered by an employer plan. Both to my eternal chagrin are tepid Obama supporters (hopefully they’ll outgrow it). One would not be eligible for health insurance due to a “pre-existing condition;” the other is seemingly as healthy as the proverbial horse.
Guess which on signed up for Obamacare and which one didn’t?
“The entire conceptual foundation of Marxism is false. It’s a shame nobody studies it anymore.”
Why do you think that is? Fall of the Soviet Union contribute to the decline in the need to study this?
I get your point on the freeloader rebelling against capitalism. Hardcore Marxists would not say that in public b/c to use such words would be enough for there remaining average US citizens to turn them out. Language is used covertly to advance their agenda, even if leftists have to contradict themselves. In a society of high volume info delivery and overload, people’s inability to absorb, learn, reflect and decide, people are divided and there is no recognition of leftist deception at work to further their power.
For $50 per month he probably gets liability only.
That's simple.
The lies are even deeper than most people know. One of the worst is that the GOP Members (on the whole) oppose Obamacare and want it repealed. They dont, and the reason why discloses the biggest lie of all.
The Medicare Act of 1965 issued a guarantee of Federal payment for all usual, customary, and reasonable medical services, WITHOUT LIMIT. Using a standard static, socialist analysis they looked at what seniors had paid out of pocket, voluntarily, from 1956-1965 and figured the government would not be on the hook for a whole lot.
But that promise to pay without limit created a huge industry, bigger than the defense industry, that in an explosion of dynamic capitalist creativity discovered, invented, and marketed an immense array of useful, life-improving or even lifesaving products.
There are too many to list, so take one - the $60,000 pacemaker/defibrillator. In 1964, had they existed and had they been sold under a free market, very, very few seniors would have paid the $60,000 to get one. The necessary inventive and developmental work would never, never, have come about without the certainty of free money to purchase as many of them as could possibly be needed.
Now, whether or not these devices are good or bad, or are overused or underused, is not my point. On that issue, YMMV.
Without the socialist guarantee of money without limit, the capitalists would never have created them, just like Glastron would never offer aircraft carriers on the open market.
The socialists in Congress in 1965 knew, I believe, that Medicare would (somehow) smash capitalism. But, being socialists, they did not anticipate all the creations of the medical-industrial complex that would start to incur deficits as early as 1984.
Since the Great Compromise of 1986, Congress has paid for all this by borrowing or printing money. All of them, Republicans and Democrats alike, understand that theyve created a monster and that their foundational promises of 1965 were lies, but none of them have a clue how to end it.
Obamacare is the answer for this generation of Congressthings. Everything that everyone knows is wrong with it is true, including that it cannot possibly work. But they dont care about that. They needed to do something, and they did.
We cannot go back to 2008, because in 2008 the system, because of the promise to pay for anything capitalism could create, without limit and with OPM, was on a collision course with reality.
If you favor going back, which I do on most days, you have to go back to 1964 and redo Medicare with some kind of budget limit. And to do that, the government hands off my Medicare people are going to have to wise up.
Welcome to the party, pal. I told you so.
Obama told him his plan would only cost about $100 per month. Now they want $600?
Ooops misread $300.
Great answer and doable if everyone was on board...which isn't gonna happen, I don't think. My spouse thinks the mess Obamacare is in was planned to get us on Single Payer ASAP...with that in mind...If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Dessert, in 5 Years thered be a shortage of sand Milton Friedman
Medicine with limits well in place, can be partnered with narrow Gov. aid, led by the States. Personally I believe government should leave education to the individuals; students who have to work for an education would truly appreciate it more. Government is too involved as it is now. Getting the Gov out would save billions...and yes I can see the battle from the left in order to hold onto power.
Of course, everybody is not on board.
But, on board or not, the destructive ramifications of Medicare (open-ended spending commitment destroys budgeting)will continue until the whole thing falls over.
I wrote what I wrote to explain the mysterious Republican “opposition” to Obamacare, an opposition that does everything EXCEPT anything that might be effective.
A better way to explain it is that the Republicans UNDERSTAND the need to end the Medicare commitment, and they REALIZE that Obamacare will do that, and they HOPE that the Democrats will be blamed, but they KNOW they have no idea about what to do themselves, so they might as well go along.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.