The Charlotte Observer shares the story of a man who shunned Obamacare and decided to live without health insurance, but now that the consequences of his choices have caught up to him, it's obviously someone else's fault.
A recent trip to the emergency room yielded medical bills that exhausted his savings and forced him out of work, but he can't find coverage now for several reasons.
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.
“(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,” Mary Lang said last week. “We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.”
You could make the case that enrollment should be open year-round and I would probably agree with you, but there's a gap that Mister Lang falls into that is a Republican creation.
Lang would qualify for Medicaid, but South Carolina and its conservative state house decided not to accept the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.
These are the real-world consequences of refusing to expand Medicaid. State taxpayers will now be on the hook for a portion of Lang's treatment, but if the state had accepted the expansion of Medicaid the federal government would have covered 100 percent of the cost.
Refusing to expand Medicaid does not save the state money. It costs the state money.
