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.
Anyone who’s remotely familiar with insurance knows there’s no system that lets people skip payments while they’re healthy and cash in when they get sick. Public systems tax everyone. Private ones rely on the premiums of the well to cover the costs of those who are ailing.
And Democrats might point out that the ACA was designed to cover people whose income falls below the poverty line through Medicaid. The federal government pays 100 percent of the ACA expansion to cover low-income, able-bodied adults, but 21 Republican-led states, including North and South Carolina, declined to participate.
Lang says he hasn’t applied for Social Security disability benefits because it takes too long.
Read more here: Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
Read more here: Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
When I started covering health care last summer, Newsday columnist Lane Filler wrote a column that was striking in its candor. He argued for employers to get out of the health insurance business, shift the money they spend on premiums into employee wages and give everyone the freedom to decide whether they’ll spend it on insurance.
“If I were just free I could buy no health insurance, instead banking the money to pay medical bills as they came due,” Filler wrote.
“But ‘just free’ societies must have onerous consequences for the imprudent and the unlucky. If we want to be allowed to buy health insurance or not, we must be willing to let folks who choose wrong be bankrupted by medical bills. Worse, we must be willing to let them die for lack of care, and listen to them wail from the gutters.”
That kind of argument can be easy to defend in an intellectual debate and hard to hold onto when you’re face-to-face with someone who’s going to die – or go blind – when they could be saved.
more
Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
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.
Anyone who’s remotely familiar with insurance knows there’s no system that lets people skip payments while they’re healthy and cash in when they get sick. Public systems tax everyone. Private ones rely on the premiums of the well to cover the costs of those who are ailing.
And Democrats might point out that the ACA was designed to cover people whose income falls below the poverty line through Medicaid. The federal government pays 100 percent of the ACA expansion to cover low-income, able-bodied adults, but 21 Republican-led states, including North and South Carolina, declined to participate.
Lang says he hasn’t applied for Social Security disability benefits because it takes too long.
Read more here: Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
Read more here: Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
When I started covering health care last summer, Newsday columnist Lane Filler wrote a column that was striking in its candor. He argued for employers to get out of the health insurance business, shift the money they spend on premiums into employee wages and give everyone the freedom to decide whether they’ll spend it on insurance.
“If I were just free I could buy no health insurance, instead banking the money to pay medical bills as they came due,” Filler wrote.
“But ‘just free’ societies must have onerous consequences for the imprudent and the unlucky. If we want to be allowed to buy health insurance or not, we must be willing to let folks who choose wrong be bankrupted by medical bills. Worse, we must be willing to let them die for lack of care, and listen to them wail from the gutters.”
That kind of argument can be easy to defend in an intellectual debate and hard to hold onto when you’re face-to-face with someone who’s going to die – or go blind – when they could be saved.
more
Who should save sight of Fort Mill man who can’t afford surgery? | The Herald
