From the Los Angeles Times:
Not to be overly dramatic, but for me the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act was a matter of life and death….
When I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer late last year, I had no health insurance, which meant my options were extremely limited. No insurer would pick up someone in my circumstances. But luckily, the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan had already kicked in, and it made it possible for me to purchase insurance under a government program.
I was uninsured not because I’m a lazy, freeloading deadbeat but because my husband and I are self-employed. We had been purchasing health insurance on the individual market along with 6% of the rest of the population. But after exhausting all of our resources trying to keep up with premiums of $1,500 a month, we had no choice but to cancel it.
Six months ago, when I first wrote about my situation in this newspaper, I got hate mail from people who said I deserved to die. But there was also a lot of curiosity and a lot of encouragement and support. Much of the curiosity was from abroad. Canadians, French, Italian, British and Swiss cannot understand why healthcare reform is so politicized here; why most people don’t know anything about the Affordable Care Act; how we can be so cruel to one another; and why we criticize their healthcare systems.
There but for the grace of god….
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I pay for my own family’s health insurance, and it doesn’t come even close to $1,500 per month – I pay around $300 per month. It is a high-deductible catastrophic plan that lets me sleep at night knowing that if I came down with cancer that it would take care of me. I pay out of pocket for my family’s routine medical expenses, and that is just fine with me.
Declaring that health insurance is an all-or-nothing proposition – you have to spend thousands, or else you have nothing at all – is a big fat lie. Don’t tell me that you couldn’t find a health insurance plan that you could afford – you could have afforded the same plan that I have, if you bothered to get it when you were still healthy.
Now you are sick and on the public dole, living high off of my tax dollars that could have been spent on things that we all could use for the common good, or kept for ourselves to make our own lives better without government interference. You blew off being responsible for yourself, and you are lying about what you could have done to keep yourself on your own two feet.
People from other countries who are used to free rides may be sympathetic, but I’m the one giving you the free ride, so I’m not. That isn’t cruelty, that is disgust.
nonsense. This is from the LA Times so assuming this person lives in AC then CA has a plan for this situation prior to Obamacare AND even at 60 years of age she and her husband would not pay anywhere close to $ 1,500 a month. Lets try the truth – she chose NOT to buy insurance until she was sick. Now we all get to pay for her.
There but for the grace of god.. and the American taxpayer
@sunforester: Every state and insurance company is different. You don’t know what pre-existing conditions she and/or her husband may have had that drove up the cost of their insurance premiums before she was diagnosed. I know- I was self employed and paying an increasing amount each year in premiums – the insurance company would increase the premium annually as my claims for severe asthma and spinal stenosis were paid. Between my husband and me – what started out on a high deductable plan of $350/month ended up after 5 years at over $1000/month. Who can afford that?
I have a friend in Wisconsin who had two hip replacements in her 40s. After her husband died, she couldn’t get regular insurance in her 50s because of those pre-existing conditions (during the Bush administration), so had to go on the state Medicaid insurance supplemental plan, even though she worked full time as an independent consultant. The premiums for her alone were $1500/month, which she paid. But she debated about it. However, after her sister was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, she decided to maintain the policy at any cost. She made good money and could afford the premium. Not everyone can…