The story is this: this self-employed contractor was previously on his wife's insurance, but her employer stopped providing coverage. A lot of employers have used the excuse of the Affordable Care Act to stop providing spousal coverage, when Obamacare in fact has little to do with it.
Anyway, back to the Hubbses.
So, Lenny was dropped from his wife's insurance, and they are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. (We aren't told if they would qualify for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, were Oklahoma to implement it, but that's by-the-by for the Obamahaters).
They said they didn't buy private insurance because it was too expensive: $500 for "good" insurance is what the quote in the story says.
Whoa. Hold on there. A quick look at the federal Health Exchange for Oklahoma City tells me that you could get a Platinum policy - that's to say a Rolls Royce health insurance plan with all the bells and whistles - for $553 per month. (To put that into context: only about 7% of those who have purchased insurance on the exchanges have gone for a top of the range Platinum policy).
Bronze policies for someone aged 45-50 (my guess of what Larry's age is) in Oklahoma City start at $113 per month, before any potential eligibility for subsidies (but since both of them work, I am guessing that their incomes are too high to be eligible for subsidy.)
So what we really have here, contrary to how it was spun on TV, is a man who lost his insurance, and declined to buy private insurance, apparently on the basis that since they couldn't afford the most expensive insurance available, it was better to go without any insurance at all. He then got sick and has been landed with a huge medical bill.
This is precisely the sort of situation that Obamacare is designed to prevent, by making it a requirement that everybody buy health insurance.
But this sort of lies and scaremongering is nothing new.
Consider this report in the Washington Post: a political campaign advert featured a woman claiming that because of Obamacare she couldn't afford her health insurance and lost her cancer doctor.
The truth is she could keep her cancer doctor, and in fact the Affordable Care Act was saving her money.
Or this, on Fox, where lying toe-rag Sean Hannity invited on three couples who were "victims" of Obamacare, except it turned out that either they were in no way affected by it, or were helped by it.
At the root of this is a moral dishonesty that is so corrupt and disingenuous it makes me really angry: in order to score political points these people are actively encouraging their viewers and readers and constituents to forego health coverage, or frightening them away from a policy that could be very beneficial to them.
Politics is a rough and tumble game, but this sort of lies and bull is, to me at least, completely beyond the Pale.
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