Kevin Drum explains what would happen to him if ACA were repealed: due to his cancer, he’d be uninsurable. If his current employer folded – not a remote eventuality, in the world of magazine and online journalism – he’d be s.o.l.
Kevin, let us recall, is neither poor nor reckless. He didn’t choose to get cancer. He did choose to have health insurance. Nothing he could have done – short of working for a government or TBTF private outfit – could have protected him from the risk he will face if a Republican is elected President in 2016 and does what he will have promised to do in order to become the Republican nominee.
So, here’s a challenge to my conservative and libertarian readers: Â Tell me, if you can, why that would be OK with you.
I promise to publish any literate and coherent reply verbatim, or link to any post elsewhere that answers the challenge.
Update A reader points me to this Megan McArdle post from 2012, which explains in detail how a little-known provision of HIPPA (a law that long pre-existed ACA) would protect someone in the position Kevin would be in should Mother Jones fold. Anyone who has continuously maintained health insurance is, apparently, eligible to buy new insurance without underwriting. That’s not much help to people who, when they lose their jobs, don’t have enough in the bank to keep paying for unsubsidized health insurance. But that’s not Kevin’s situation. Unless some health care wonk tells me otherwise, I’ll count my challenge as having been fully met, and will have to fall back on the other 69,000 reasons Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican.
[Cross-posted at The Reality-Based Community]
