Meet South Carolina’s Luis Lang, the latest victim of Obama Derangement Syndrome endemic to red states.
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.
“(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.”
So to recap, Lang refused to buy insurance because OBAMA TYRANNY, and when he needed to buy it, he couldn’t because of the enrollment period issues, and when he then needed the safety net of Medicaid expansion, he lives in a red state where that OBAMA TYRANNY too is prohibited, so of course it’s 100% Obama’s fault he’s about to lose his eyesight.
I do actually empathize with the man, but the fact of the matter is when you make the choice to do everything in your power to make sure the Affordable Care Act doesn’t work, vote for people who will make sure the law doesn’t work, and support other people making the choice to cripple the law so that it doesn’t work, and then are furious when you discover that the law doesn’t work, whose fault is that in the end?
There are a lot of people that Luis Lang could blame, but considering under the pre-Obamacare system that Lang never would have been able to get coverage for his eye surgery because every insurance company would have turned him down for diabetes as a pre-existing condition, maybe President Obama isn’t the person he should be mad at.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
I feel a little sorry for him because he’s pretty obviously one of those older white dudes who has been telling himself (and others) all his life that he’s self-sufficient, doesn’t need any help, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, etc etc. Now that he’s realizes that he wasn’t really smarter than everyone else, he was just lucky, he’s lashing out in rage.
Amir Khalid
But President Obama is the person Luis Lang wants to be mad at, right?
Cacti
My recommendation to Mr. Lang:
Learn braille.
WereBear
Thanks for nutshelling it.
And yeah, pride. It was one thing when “healthcare costs” meant giving a couple of extra chickens to the doctor, like my grandparents during the Depression. But NOW? There isn’t anything cheap enough for the average person to afford.
That’s reality.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): And… he admits he’s both a smoker and has been rather random in his self-care.
I know Republicans have been rather vocal about CHOICES in the past…
JDM
Luis, we should have a system, like Canada’s, or France’s, or the UK’s, etc., where you could now just sign up and be good to go. But if you opposed the Obamacare setup you were sure as shooting against a better setup. So despite your opposition we got a system that could have helped you and your family; you just refused to use it. You screwed up – big time – and now not only you are going to pay (not just literally) but so is your family. But at least man up and admit your massive mistake. Doing so could help others avoid making the same stupid and costly mistake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not without compassion, but he’s 49 years old and he “prided himself” on paying out of pocket, and from what I understand continued to do so after he was diagnosed with diabetes. His dimwitted, self-aggrandizing romanticism (I’m a self-reliant sovereign citizen!) predates Obamacare. With $9,000 in savings and diagnosed as diabetic, he thought eh could pay out of pocket? Did he ever meet anybody who had been in the hospital for more than two days? He thought help would be available in an emergency? From the Koch brothers? ALEC? The Paul family?
NonyNony
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Look, there are people in this country – quite a lot of them, actually – who have no comprehension of how difficult anything is until it happens to them. They have no idea how bad it is for other people and just think “they’re a bunch of whiners” until the same circumstance happens to hit them upside the head like a 2×4 and then suddenly they understand just how bad it can get.
I have no idea how to fix this – I wish I did. Because I’m pretty much 100% confident at this point that this is the reason we cannot have nice things.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I was struck by the low savings too. It seems to me that he’s actually a paradigm case for why we need nationalized health care– but what do I know.
Iowa Old Lady
Reality bites this guy in the butt and he still blames Obama. He’s no worse off than he would have been pre-ACA. It’s interesting though that he thought he’d be better off, despite his opposition to the law.
gratuitous
“Yeah, I’m gonna thumb my nose at the system because freedom and bootstraps, but if I get in a real jam, the system will be there for me, right? No? Tyranny!”
I’m reminded of the old gag about the guy stranded on his roof during a flash flood. A boat comes by and the man refuses to get in because he’s convinced God will miracle him out of there. The waters keep rising when another boat comes by. Thanks, but not thanks; my faith is in the good Lord above. Finally, a National Guard helicopter circles overhead, but he declines the sling, maintaining that God will save him.
He drowns, of course, and goes to his eternal reward. He encounters God and asks why God didn’t save him, “My son, I sent two boats and a helicopter to save you; what the fuck?”
Mr. Lang, we set up an elaborate and expensive system to help you get health care coverage. What the fuck?
Zinsky
This doorknob doesn’t deserve to live in the great country of the United States.
SFAW
@JDM:
No problem for
a mighty dinosaursomeone who supports the Party of Personal Responsibility As Long As I Don’t Actually Have to Accept the Consequences of My Fucked-Up Actions.He can pull himself up by his own bootstraps, because he hates Obama and thus is pure of heart etc etc.
Fair Economist
He’d be fine with getting treated if the law had been implemented as written. But Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the law to let states cut people like him off of Medicare, and Nikki Haley and the South Carolina Republicans used Roberts’ rewrite to blind him.
SP
Speaking of blaming ACA, I’m a mailing list of startup entrepreneurs and someone asked a pay question- can they pre-tax reimburse an employee who is getting insurance through their spouse for payments towards the spouse’s family premiums? The answer is no, IRS has never allowed that, but of course someone said it was because of Obamacare.
Iowa Old Lady
@Fair Economist: The literalization of his metaphoric blindness is sadly on the nose.
beth
Part of the problem is the myth that the right wing puts forth about how the poor have it so good. The moochers don’t have to pay for anything – everything’s given to them – healthcare, food, housing, telephones, etc. Then when they lose their jobs and have to depend on handouts, they can’t believe how little support is out there.
NonyNony
@SFAW:
The trick is – he probably also believes that the “undeserving poor” have a secret-special healthcare system that he’s not privy too because he works too hard.
And to a degree he’s right – because SC Republicans refused to expand the system that covers people poorer than him to include him in it.
Eric U.
I have heard of a single day visit to the hospital costing $30k. How many of us could afford that out of pocket?
FlipYrWhig
So he doesn’t work (at the moment), didn’t plan ahead (sufficiently) for tough times, and he wants free healthcare? Sounds like one of those lazy moochers I’ve been hearing about from Republicans my whole life.
Fuck him, his wife, his family, his party, and his state.
Punchy
Uh…it does work. Anyone going to point out that he’s technically a law-breaker, refusing to buy the coverage he’s mandated to have? Why the fuck should I care about a damn criminal? Eff this clown and his shitbag choices. Sucks that Fear of a Barack Planet has completely fucked his life; raysism has consequences, dudn’t it?
FlipYrWhig
@beth: Not exactly — per NonyNony, I’m sure he thinks that there’s too little out there FOR HIM AND PEOPLE LIKE HIM, while there’s some special class of lazy moocher that still gets a free ride, which amplifies the perceived unfairness. This is the entirety of what makes non-rich Republicans Republicans.
WereBear
Everyone would LIKE to think they are their own island, beholden to none, just me and my sod house (cleared of pesky previous inhabitants by the Feds) and my muzzle loader (brought to me by a complex system of capital and engineering and distribution channels) and my bag of salt (that got inland by roads somebody paid for.)
For the love of missing mustard, even hunter-gatherers WORKED IN GROUPS.
Masters of illusion, every one of them.
Knowbody
I hope he dies blind, alone, and in pain.
Doctor Science
The comments on the newspaper article actually give me hope (how often does *that* happen?!?) — every one I’ve seen (so far, at least) is about how this is not Obamacare’s fault.
peach flavored shampoo
1) Didn’t buy coverage
2) Didn’t follow the law
3) Didn’t budget for a typical hospital bill (really, who can?)
4) Has now completely and likely irreversibly screwed himself and his wife
5) Card-carrying member of the GOP
Yup, The Party of Personal Responsibility and Family Values. Wait, hold on….nevermind.
Booger
That karma, she’s a bitch, no? Excuse me, what I meant to say was boo-fucking-hoo.
Monala
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I remember watching a kids’ movie once with my daughter, about a spunky girl from a poor, Depression-era immigrant family. Throughout the movie, her parents kept trying to instill a mantra into their kids that they were strong, hardworking and didn’t take charity from anybody. Meanwhile, even though they took work whenever they could get it, they also relied on food pantries, free medical care at the local charity hospital, and the kids received free lunch at school. There is even a scene in which the central character makes fun of the less than appetizing school lunches, and thus is told she can’t get free lunch anymore. When her parents discover this, they march down to the school and demand that they rescind this punishment, threatening to tell the media that the school starves young kids if they don’t.
This family never seemed to experience any cognitive dissonance between the message of self-reliance they drummed into the kids, and the reality of how often and unabashedly they relied on charity and government services. I know the story was fictional, but it made me wonder how many conservatives experienced something similar in childhood: messages from their parents that insist they’re self-reliant, drummed in so deeply that they truly believe that’s the case, even in the face of reality that they are actually not (“I built that”).
FlipYrWhig
Also, this guy should probably attempt to comprehend that the whole point of insurance is that you pay out little by little when you don’t need help so that when you do, the entity you’ve been paying can be called upon to assist you. He didn’t do that. Oh well, them’s the breaks, buddy. If you haven’t been making house payments you might not be able to live where you’re living very long, either.
SFAW
@NonyNony:
Well, he’d be right. I mean, who DOESN’T want to collect their welfare checks to that they can spend them on Cadillacs and T-bones?
It’s like unemployment checks: EVERYONE would jump at the chance to make no more than 50 percent of their former/usual wages, for a limited period of time, and then be stuck without a real job.
Assholes like this guy perpetuate the stranglehold the Rethugs have on America. I hope he gets some kind of relief, because no one should be stuck like that, but I ain’t going to lose sleep over his self-made problem.
SFAW
@WereBear:
Outstanding!
VFX Lurker
In 2009-2010, as Facebook arguments about the ACA popped up, a Republican-voting acquaintance proposed limited windows of open enrollment to discourage people from gaming the system. He meant this as an alternative to the health-care bill, but he was unaware that the bill already implemented that.
So, at least some Republicans wanted open enrollment to be limited to a few months a year, in order to encourage positive behavior. In practice, it does not work for everyone.
Hillary Rettig
>“(My husband) should be at the front of the line …”
interesting phrasing. she doesn’t just want help; she wants it ahead of everyone else.
SFAW
@Monala:
Screenplay by Craig T. Nelson, no doubt.
eemom
That is where you and I part company.
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s more like it.
@Knowbody:
Now THAT kind of vitriol, I reserve for those who fuck over people other than themselves.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s all the fault of the fucking ni*CLANG*, isn’t it, Lang, you worthless piece of shit.
Fuck you, asshole. I’d be much more sympathetic if it wasn’t so fucking obvious that you’re racist dogshit.
Iowa Old Lady
@FlipYrWhig: It seems remarkably hard for some folks to grasp that’s how insurance works. You remember the story from a few years back about a town where everyone was supposed to pay some annual amount for the fire dept? $75 or some such amount. A guy who didn’t pay had his house catch fire and there was much outrage when the fire dept didn’t help him even though he tried to hand them $75.
You can sympathize, especially since that’s a stupid way to fund your fire dept, but clearly that guy, like this one, didn’t grasp how insurance works.
Calouste
@SFAW:
Well, he’s got a $300,000 house he can sell, although I wouldn’t be surprised (considering he only had $9,000 in savings at age 49) if it is remortgaged to the hilt.
Cacti
This fellow is the poster boy for “personal responsibility” Republican style.
I don’t need nuthin’ from nobody…but when I do, I should get to butt up to the front of the line because I “deserve” it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t often wish we had like buttons….
Face
I bet Ben Carson is happy one more Republican voter is unable to see well enough to descern color. That’ll be 97.4% of Ben’s GOP voter base.
Patrick in Michigan
@Mnemosyne (tablet): As a white man, I got two words for you: Fuck off.
Betty Cracker
@eemom: This x 3.
SFAW
@Hillary Rettig:
Maybe she only wants him ahead of those undeserving poor people, because he’s not like them.
$9K in savings? That’s not a whole hell of a lot, as others have pointed out.
And why the hell isn’t SHE working? (Maybe she is, I confess I didn’t read the article, just the excerpt.I guess I’ll have to.)
sacrablue
I don’t have sympathy for this fool. I say this as someone who avoided admitting that I was a type 2 diabetic. There was numerous signs over many years that I ignored. I was forced to see a doctor in order to get follow-up treatment for an injury. I had to have a complete physical with lab work. In order to get to the point that you have diabetic retinopathy, you have to have been diabetic for quite some time. In addition, $9,000 wouldn’t have covered hospital treatment for my emergency room treatment. Who in this century could possibly believe he could afford medical treatment with that small amount. I bet he still believes in the tooth fairy as well.
Cacti
@SFAW:
Natch.
He shouldn’t be condemned for his lack of planning and foresight (no pun intended). He was too busy paying for all those lazy poors to have their T-bone steaks and Cadillacs.
FlipYrWhig
@Calouste: And then he’ll probably cry foul that he’s been making payments every month but still owes a ton of money on the mortgage.
jl
Pride goeth before a fall. I read that in some book that is supposed to be popular in the Red States.
Sorry and sad story about a delusional person. Good luck to him in what looks to be a major change in his life course.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly. Consequences, you fucking asshole. You and your party work hard to fuck over the most vulnerable people, then one day you find yourself in the ranks of the vulnerable, cuz life can be like that sometimes. And you and your asshole wife have the gall to blame those trying to help.
Fuck all fucking fascists, very much including this asshole. Empathy is not bottomless.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: @Cacti: That’s, of course, exactly what she means. I guarantee you they think Obamacare is medical welfare for Those People, and that it’s not fair that Good People like them are getting hosed while Those People get to live large on the Good People’s dime.
JPL
I hope that Mrs. Lang reads the comments from that article to Mr. Lang. Although I certainly wish him well, he needs to turn off Fox news.
Cacti
@Eric U.:
And FSM help you if you need coronary bypass surgery, which starts around $70k.
Iowa Old Lady
Here’s another bit about Lang from that article:
“Lang says he hasn’t applied for Social Security disability benefits because it takes too long. “
NonyNony
@Monala:
Exactly. This is the kind of garbage that my parents stuffed into MY head when I was growing up – it took far too long for me to realize that they were saying one thing and doing another. Or more to the point – that they had misunderstood the lessons that their own parents were trying to impart. As someone who was a young woman during the Depression, Grandma had no problem taking a government subsidy or “free cheese” or whatever was being handed out – and she didn’t see that as being in conflict with her own self-reliance. The point was that you had to do everything you could on your own, and where it wasn’t enough you shored that up with support from other places. You hoped to not have to use it, but if you did you did. It was a very pragmatic approach.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As a tot I thought auto insurance was expensive. Then, in my state, if one could post a bond in the mid 5-figures, one didn’t need to buy insurance. Of course, in an accident, one didn’t get the bond $ back, mu Dad explained to me.
Even as an unmarried male under 20 driver, the most expensive demographic, it clicked for me at the tender age of 18.
What is this Sovereign Citizen’s problem. And will he be alive to put in an appearance at the GOP convention next year?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is it because of the house ($300K) that he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid?
mac007
I’m shocked (although I probably shouldn’t be) at the amount of “Fuck Him!!!” comments. Being a progressive and a liberal means having compassion for others, even those who make stupid fucking mistakes. Although I think the guy is 100% wrong, I don’t think he should go blind because he’s a moron. If you do, you need to seriously go and reevaluate your moral system.
dedc79
@JPL: I can’t remember the last time I’ve scrolled through a comment thread for a newspaper website and not been absolutely horrified by the ignorance and hate being spewed. This one was a pleasant surprise by comparison to most.
Face
Luis spelled “LUIS”, and not Louis? Self-employed handyman? Seems a bit Hispanic-y. Probably a Dem secret counteragent plant being used to expose SC’s Medicare expansion refusal.
Where’s Malkin when I need countertops checked?
PurpleGirl
@WereBear: Yes. Where’s that famous Republican PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for taking care of himself? And if they do indeed live in a house worth $300,000 and the wife hasn’t worked, they must be living paycheck to paycheck, just making the mortgage payments by the skin of their teeth. If $9,000 or so wiped out their savings, they didn’t have much in savings — again, where’s that famous Republican personal responsibility.? Why doesn’t the wife go to work now? Or is she not trained to do anything but maybe be a retail clerk (which would be beneath her)?
I’m sorry he’s going blind, but retinal problems are a known complication of diabetes, why wasn’t he taking care of himself? On the private insurance market he’d have never gotten insurance with diabetes — numero uno pre-existing condition.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Either that, or because he’s been getting paid off the books, and doesn’t have much in the account.
ETA: No, I don’t really think the off-the-books thing is likely. I was just doing what we do best here at BJ, which is speculate wildly on things where we have insufficient information.
rikyrah
no sympathy for him whatsoever.
liberal
I’m totally without compassion. Right-wingers claim to believe in self-sufficiency and responsibility. Eat it, pal.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No.
South Carolina has a primary residence exemption in determining countable assets for Medicaid eligibility, as do most states.
ETA: The primary residence exemption is limited to $500,000 in equity value under federal statute, so he’s well within that amount.
Calouste
@mac007: It’s not that he made mistakes. It’s that he has actively voted to put others as well as himself in this situation.
Tyro
I don’t see why all those doctors who rant about how awful Obamacare is aren’t lining up outside his house to provide free treatment, thus proving the Obamacare isn’t necessary.
liberal
@mac007:
So you don’t believe in any notion of self-agency?
This douchebag made his choices. Screw him.
Belafon
@Patrick in Michigan: As a fellow white man: Same back at you.
SFAW
@mac007:
It’s not his moronitude that’s the issue – although that’s certainly part of it – it’s his whole fucked-up ethos, and that of his wife.
Mustang Bobby
So, how soon will he start up a GoFundMe campaign to get other people to pay for his healthcare, which, ironically, is how health insurance works.
Sorry, but even my Quaker sympathies fail at this point, especially for someone who purposefully avoided the system.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: that’s what I thought, and I did miss this paragraph on my first read-through
so once he goes blind, he’ll be able to get more, and presumably more expensive, coverage. Cause then he’ll be deserving.
scav
Ah, the poor little concerned one, conflating progressive and liberal politics with undemanding unconditional support for all people, regardless of what they’ve done. Just like supporting the police means taking their side in all shootings, despite the evidence, and supporting the troops means holding down those they choose to torture and, I don’t know, unconditional love means accepting that it’s your fault he hits you. Sympathy is also earned and this lout is digging the other direction enthusicastically.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You are a nicer person than I. I laughed at his predicament (given what he says about the Pres. etc.etc.).
shell
And the sense of entitlement. He disdained insurance and probably the ‘moochers’ in Obamacare. But now that he’s hurting he should ‘be at the front of the line.’
By the way, what are the ‘life events’ that will allow you to buy into the ACA after enrollment ends? Moving to another state or having a baby, I think are two of them.
Chris
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot:
This.
Look, human stupidity is the gift that keeps on giving, and since we’ve all had moments of staggeringly bad judgment at some point or other (I know I have), I could empathize if all this was was a guy shooting himself in the foot because he was an honest idiot.
But that’s not all this is; the reason people like this keep shooting themselves in the foot is that they’re trying to hit the immigrant, or unemployed, or black, or unionized guy who lives downstairs. These people dedicate their entire party to obsessively doing everything they can to ensure that all the people they’ve deemed Unworthy have nothing to rely on when the shit hits the fan. There is nothing to sympathize with here, only an asshole who’s suffering exactly the fate that he wanted millions of others to have.
NonyNony
@mac007:
I would be, except I’ve been around here for a while. Folks around here are mean when it comes to dancing on the misfortune of GOP voters.
I’m sympathetic to the guy – he’s an idiot, but since I’m neither a Republican nor a Libertarian I don’t consider it to be worth celebrating his misfortune or see the need to rub his face in it. It’s not like he’s Rupert Murdoch or Jeb Bush or any of the other plutocrats who make all of our lives miserable – he’s just one of their many useful tools. I actually hope he gets some help and some education on why having insurance in the future might just be important. (Sadly he’ll probably end up deteriorating so far he actually qualifies for Medicaid before that happens.)
mac007
@Calouste: And for that, he should be excoriated, pointed to, and laughed at. I’ve got not problem with that. What I do have a problem with is people who “hope he dies blind, alone, and in pain”. That’s vile.
FlipYrWhig
@mac007: He might deserve compassion if he had shown any evidence of having learned a lesson himself. He hasn’t. He tried to game the system, he blew it, and he still thinks someone else should step in. This is like the hurt guy bitching at the Good Samaritan and then being all huffy that the Good Samaritan hasn’t doubled back to help him yet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT:
Bill
It’s clear this guy didn’t understand – or more likely ignored – the math. There are very very few people who can afford to deal with health care costs out of pocket. That’s what’s so frustrating about these “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” types. They willfully avoid the grade school level math that’s required to figure out that’s just not possible.
Health insurance, minimum wage, public services….the list goes on and on.
Maybe more and more of these stories will start to turn the tide? Nah…probably not.
mac007
@liberal: You are right, in that he will probably pay for his poor decisions with the loss of his eyesight. But I take no pleasure in that fact, although many others apparently do.
PurpleGirl
@Fair Economist: MEDICAID, MEDICAID, MEDICAID. Not Medicare, which is for retirees and people receiving SS Disability. (With the proviso that it doesn’t kick in for two years once you get SSDI.)
Please people get the name of the programs right, they are not the same. And he might not have been eligible for Medicaid depending on the rules for assets and what is counted as an asset in SC.
catclub
Wow, I don’t know if the comments at that newspaper are moderated, but they are incredibly intelligent and useful.
I was surprised.
They must be moderated.
Bill
@mac007: Well said.
John M. Burt
Republicans: “Let him die!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0
Belafon
@Mustang Bobby: He already has, it’s in the article.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
In my view, no one can ‘deserve’ or earn compassion. If we wait to give our donations to the ‘deserving’ poor we will wait forever.
Chris
@mac007:
I don’t think he should go blind because he’s a moron, but that’s very different from having any sympathy for him whatsoever.
Furthermore, this is actually one of these “what the fuck can you do?” situations. We have thrown people like this a rope again and again and again, and every time they’ve picked it up, thrown it back, and angrily shouted that they didn’t need our help. Back in the health care debate, I don’t think anybody here was arguing for a “you should only be covered if you’re not a right wing asshole” clause to the ACA – we want everyone covered. People like this, however, insist on electing people who’re going to refuse federal funds for things that could help them, like the Medicaid expansion – and refuse to buy health insurance when they can afford it.
What more can we do?
catclub
@Belafon: Other answer being: “Not soon enough.”
Tyro
@Mustang Bobby: conservatives are willing to donate millions to George Zimmerman. Why aren’t they putting up their money to help this guy?
Heck, there would be no Obamacare if people paid money to take care of every uninsured person’s medical bills. So why don’t they do it?
SFAW
@Mustang Bobby:
I think he already has, if I’m remembering the article correctly.
ETA: As Belafon has already confirmed.
JCJ
Can’t he just call Rand Paul for some teabagger discount retinal surgery?
Corner Stone
@Mustang Bobby: Ha has one, started, and then there’s this:
So in the end we do get to subsidize his poor choices, if he’s lucky.
Belafon
@mac007: He’s figuratively shot himself in the foot multiple times. When he realizes he’s shooting himself, rather than Obama shooting him, then I’ll be all sorts of welcoming. It’s his constant bitching that Obama has failed him that he needs to deal with.
JPL
@Mustang Bobby: The article links to his go fund page.
GA just added on additional coverage for those with autistic children. It’s the same state whose reps want to rid us of ACA and allow us to shop for insurance coverage across state lines. The parents who fought so hard for that coverage would quickly lose it. They have no clue.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@beth:
Yes, this.
This is whats the matter with Kansas. Whenever I hear rightwing nonsense spouted by some blue collar guy, its always framed in this myth that half his paycheck goes to fund indolent moochers who never have to lift a finger.
But him, by God, he has to bust his ass and never took anything from anybody.
low-tech cyclist
As long as I’m healthy, I don’t need insurance! And when it isn’t raining, I don’t need a roof!
What a maroon.
It’s also hard to feel too much sympathy for a guy with a 3,300 square foot house, and only $9000 in savings before his health went south. Shoulda had less house and a healthier bank account, because if you’re going to self-insure, that bank account IS your insurance.
What a perfect combination of arrogance and stupidity. And he’s blaming Obama for what the GOP did to him, and for what he did to himself.
He won’t miss his sight that much, because he’s already blind.
I have compassion for people who try to do the right thing, and get screwed over anyway. There are far too many people like that in this world. But this guy? Maybe he and his wife can throw some bake sales to raise the money for the operation.
Chris
@Monala:
Plenty. In my experience, poor Republicans may talk a good game about how self-reliant and individualist their upbringing was. But actually dig into their past, “wait, so you never… and you never… and…” and inevitably there’ll be that ONE SPECIAL TIME, where okay, they or their parents DID accept those government handouts or that government scholarship or whatever, but you don’t understand, it’s DIFFERENT with them because THEY really NEEDED it!
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
This is not hypocricy. ‘Personal responsibility’ means ‘niggers deserve what they get.’ I know this is hard to swallow for most people. You don’t want to believe in code words, because in most situations they’re so unlikely. Let me tell you a story I hope will convince you.
Recently, Ron Paul came up in a thread here and I followed a link to an excerpt from his newsletter. You know, the ones so blatantly racist he’s now denying he wrote? This one was written in the wake of the Rodney King riots, about how you have to steel yourself to kill blacks when they come for you.
It read like a laundry list of current conservative talking points. Personal responsibility, dependency on the welfare state, everything that is sometimes referred to as a dog whistle. In particular, I was impressed by their use of ‘inner city youth’. Even the phrasing about shooting black people was standard ‘stand your ground’ type arguments.
The only difference was they tacked on ‘because black people are animals.’
Three quarters of modern Republican positions and motivations are straight racism, with a paper-thin mask to keep them from being booed and called names in public. This guy is mad that the government was giving to blacks what should rightly go to him.
The Thin Black Duke
@eemom: Unfortunately, he is fucking over the rest of us. Bottom line, no matter what atrocity the Republicans commit, they can count on at least 47% of the vote because of obedient idiots like Mr. Lang. Why should I waste my compassion on a man who’s trying to kill me? And yeah, I know “kill” is a strong accusation, but when I see anoher fool stupidity voting for a sociopathic politician who trying to take away affordable health care away from me, I can’t help but think of him as a willing accessory to murder.
Xenos
@Patrick in Michigan: Just because you are white is no excuse for having such thin skin.
Also, as a fellow white man, I would like to let you know that you are a disgrace to the race and gender. You are a petty, shitty human being who is unworthy of your heritage. Also, too, your religion is a fraudulent enterprise based on perverting some of the finest and most authentic strands of the Protestant Reformation into disgraceful apologetics for racism and oppression. It is just a filthy nest of superstitious con artists and gullible mooks like yourself. Your patriotism is a mile wide and a micron deep, and I don’t believe you are any sort of patriot in any meaningful sense.
I hope black lesbians cheat you out of your next few job opportunities, too.
Finally, your website sucks. I can’t click on anything without being suspended in some damn fool nested facebook link.
piggysus
If I were a Republican ophthalmologist running for President, I’d be all over using my personal skills to save this guy’s eyesight and secure a vote and stick my thumb in the eye of Obamacare all at the same time.
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t feel sorry for this guy in anyway shape or form. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
ThresherK (GPad)
I got an idea: When we liberals finally bail his ass out, how about making him show up to the Rose Garden and having a big ceremony (like the BFD signing ceremony), with all the media, NancySmash, Reid, Uncle Joe, and PBo & FLOTUS?
They can hand him a sheetrock-sized insurance card.
The optics will be priceless, PBo will get his cool point across without saying a word, and the right will continue to soil themselves
peach flavored shampoo
Lemmie get this straight — this guy is blaming Obamacare for denying him healthcare, while (I’m inferring) thinking the old healthcare system would have been better/easier/simpler? Does he not realize there’s NO WAY, under the old system, he’s getting a policy with that level of pre-existing conditions? Does he not realize that Obamacare is the only reason he has a prayer of getting any coverage in the future?
Why not just blame Obamacare for giving him diabetes? This guy’s a chump and a bullshit artist.
Hillary Rettig
Not negating any of the points about Republican hypocrisy, but I’ll bet another big part of this is that he was, and maybe still is, in denial about the severity of his medical condition. IANAD but it sounds like he’s going to need dialysis. How could he possibly think he could pay for that out of pocket?
Or a kidney transplant – if he’s lucky enough to find a donor?
PurpleGirl
The article said he tried getting help from some charities. I’d like to know which charities those were — his local church, their national body, a local non-profit of some sort. I’ve worked in fund raising and I can think of only a handful of foundations that offer aid to sick people. What ever happened to spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts, car washes by friends at the local gas station? Granted they are hard to do and don’t raise much money but aren’t they supposed to solve the problem.
Betty Cracker
I wish every asshole in America had single-payer insurance, including this asshole. But thanks to assholes like him, we can’t have nice things like single-payer insurance.
OzarkHillbilly
@NonyNony:
I do, or to be more specific, Darwin did.
Cacti
@Frankensteinbeck:
QFT
Mr. and Mrs. Lang are cheesed off that all of the blacks and browns don’t have to dutifully take their spots at the back of the bus, now that Mr. Lang needs a seat.
Frankensteinbeck
@PurpleGirl:
Officially, nobody can afford to do this because the government is taking all the money people would have given to charity and wasting it on welfare queens. The real explanation has more to do with the most activist branches of Christianity in America becoming hate groups, which leaves little interest in charity.
Bobby Thomson
@Patrick in Michigan: sorry about your small unit.
Belafon
This reminds me of the Sheriff from Arizona who had to put up a GoFundMe for his medical expenses. A number of liberals donated, especially those who read Wonkette, and his answer to the liberals was that he didn’t need no stinkin’ Obamacare, but can you give me more.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think the phrase has transmogrified to “urban dwellers.” Still a dog whistle, but less overtly racist.
Chris
@NonyNony:
This, I reject completely.
The world isn’t a conspiracy of Kochs, Murdochs, and Bushes. These kinds of people were already with us in the fifties and sixties (often literally the same people, or at least the same families), but had considerably less leverage to make our lives miserable at the time. The reason they have that leverage today is because so many ordinary bastards, average voters like Luis Lang who fifty years ago would probably have dismissed them as cranks and loonies, decided to hand them the keys to Washington because screwing over the leeches and moochers and other Unworthy who were gaining in status from the liberal reforms of the sixties, just meant that much to them. Without these people, the Koch brothers are nothing.
He is the one (one of the many) making our lives miserable. The fact that he’s dumb enough to make his own life miserable in the process doesn’t change that. And that’s why you see so little sympathy for people like this on this blog.
Corner Stone
The article never mentions a possible range for what his income was.
John
Maybe I am sensitive to this guy’s plight because demographically we are similar. I’m nearly 48, have type 2 diabetes and don’t always control my habits well enough. And I have very little in the way of savings because of a number of factors, chief of which is the cost of raising three kids. I am lucky enough to live in a state that expanded medicaid.
Some of the things you guys are saying are exactly the same kind of snarky, schadenfreude-laden things I would say in other circumstances. I’m sure I would dislike this guy and his wife if I met them.
BUT… This guy is terrified. His wife is probably even more terrified. They have been spoonfed a non-stop diet of hatred by Fox News, their state and local governments, and probably their neighbors. Sometimes it takes a while for a person to be able to think critically instead of just reacting. Sometimes it never happens. Judging the wife for saying her husband should be at the top of the list is ridiculous. Of course she feels that way. I would feel the same way about my wife, even knowing when I said it that it was a ridiculous thing to say.
The comments on the GoFundMe page are relentlessly judgmental, which is to be expected. However, I noticed that everyone who seems to have donated is a progressive (or at least an ACA supporter). I have some hope that this fact will eventually sink in with this guy and his wife. But even if it doesn’t, keep in mind that conservatives don’t have a monopoly on being short-sighted and ignorant. They dominate the market, but haven’t cornered it yet.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or, as (I think) Fred Pohl wrote: “Think of it as evolution in action.”
Bobby Thomson
@mac007: yeah, this. And I must be the only one who doesn’t think having 9k in savings from a blue collar job is pretty damn good. The commenters obviously come from money.
Chris
@PurpleGirl:
My birdbrain cousins are on some kind of “Christian health insurance” plan. According to what I read when I looked it up, you pay a monthly fee that’s exactly the same as my BCBS fee… but when you have medical operations, you have to pay for all of them up front, and then post them on the website and ask your fellow Christian in the insurance network to donate the money to reimburse you.
Guess that’s the kind of thing they see as the solution.
Belafon
@John:
The only thing I would ask is name a liberal short sighted view that costs people this way.
Punchy
Oh go fuck off. We’re all pointing out rampant hypocrisy, near-certain racism, and wanton stupidity of a clown who wants to grossly incorrectly blame O-care for his problems. Nobody gives a shit that he’s GOP (v. Dem), but being GOP just adds to the bullshit of it all. He votes for a party that actively demonizes what this man desperately needs. He chooses to live in a GOP state that actively denies him expanded Medicare. That’s some Grade A schadenfreude.
And commenters here haven’t missed that angle.
Corner Stone
@low-tech cyclist:
And all of his fellow travelers will get angry and be in violent agreement with him.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Patrick in Michigan:
Touched a nerve, I see. I’ll amplify it for you: you are not actually smarter than those other people who need food stamps, or Medicaid, or unemployment benefits, or disability payments. You’re just luckier. And if you don’t face that reality, someday you will find yourself in the same position as Mr. Lang and have no conception that you ended up there due to your overestimation of your own abilities.
Corner Stone
@beth:
I posted something here not long ago where Ben Carson put out a little fact sheet laying out how the poors were all cheating the system to the tune of about $70K a year. Someone I’ve known for years had posted it to his FB page as if it were a thing that’s true.
boatboy_srq
@Iowa Old Lady: Veruca Salt strikes again.
Calouste
@Frankensteinbeck: Just like “an armed society is a polite society” really means “an armed society is a society where the [email protected]@ers know their place”.
SFAW
@John:
Which is the point. If she had a femtogram of self-awareness, or compassion for those damned O-bots, she would have said something like “Yeah, we really screwed the pooch on this. I really hope we can get to the front of the line, because he may not be able to work again if he has to wait too long.” But it was all about what they deserve, etc., etc.
No, you wouldn’t. You would say something a lot closer to what I wrote above. And you would probably humble yourself. Humility is tough, the RWTMs should try it once in a while. (No, I don’t think people need to humble themselves in order to become deserving. But “anti-humility” is a fast way to get a big “Fuck You” from a number of otherwise compassionate folk.)
namekarB
So. He is upset that he is in the same circumstances that he would be in if Obamacare had either never been implemented or were to be repealed.
janeform
@mac007: seconded. This guy has been lied to by Republicans and the MSM for years. His world view is fucked up, but he’s had a huge assist.
qwerty42
… There are a lot of people that Luis Lang could blame, but considering under the pre-Obamacare system that Lang never would have been able to get coverage for his eye surgery because every insurance company would have turned him down for diabetes as a pre-existing condition, maybe President Obama isn’t the person he should be mad at.
It is very difficult to accept that you were wrong and the consequences of your actions caused the state you are in.
I really sympathize; this is a terrible circumstance to be in.
Cacti
@Punchy:
+1
I hope that this guy doesn’t go blind in spite of himself. That’s because I’m a liberal and I don’t believe social safety nets should only be there for people who aren’t jerks.
Is it being a bad sport to point out that this particular jerk is getting what he spent a lifetime wishing on those he deemed inferior? Not even a little.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Well. Again I must reiterate my demand that the federal government stop tax transfer payments between the states. Let the South sink or swim on their own merits.
They have none, so good luck with that.
I certainly hope Mr. Lang does not go blind but it looks as though that’s not working out real well for him, is it?
I dunno. I’d be rethinking some of my core beliefs if I were this guy, but apparently he doesn’t have the capacity for self-reflection. If you’re in your forties and are thinking you’re going to be able to skate by with no health insurance, I have nothing that can be said save that you are wrong.
Well, he can get sell his fancy-ass house, spend all that money, and then go on Medicaid like residents of non-ACA state still have to.
I have no doubt whatsoever he will vote GOP in 2016, cursing the damned nigger in the White House that made him blind.
Nothing you can do for these people. Nothing.
D58826
I think Mr. Lang would qualify for the Ron Paul health insurance plan – – just die quietly. The GOP will applaud his patriotism
Calouste
@Bobby Thomson: It’s 9k in savings compared to a 300k+ house at age 49. That is what’s unbalanced. And of course, if you think you can self-insure your health, 9K won’t last you a week when you hit something serious, as this man found out.
Corner Stone
@John:
The simple truth in this case, and most likely others just like him, is that if Romney had been elected president and enacted Mittcare along similar parameters to the ACA this guy wouldn’t have uttered a peep about it and got insurance before his eyeballs started bleeding.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Yep, well said.
I hope that he and people in similar circumstances find solutions to their problems. I am not going to try to score easy political points off his circumstance.
That said, I would like to hear libertarians and Mitt Romney types and all the other GOP presidential klown Kar types respond to this guys situation, and explain what they would offer people who also choose not to get health care and fall on hard times. Charity? Begging?
the Conster
The comments with the article are very good, but my favorite so far is “‘t’was his ideology which will have blinded him”.
My schadenfreude has schadenfreude. I wonder if someone will read the comments to him.
SFAW
@qwerty42:
But most adults can do it. And “adults” has nothing to do with one’s chronological age.
Booger
@mac007: Except these are the people who are working so diligently to make things worse for everyone. So no, compassion has limits.
Helmut Monotreme
My aunt died after her second leg was amputated below the knee because of diabetes that she refused to admit she had. She also suffered from a series of small strokes years earlier, which turned an already stubborn woman into one who could not be reasoned with at all. My uncle was her sole caretaker and died a year later of cancer that had gone undiagnosed because he was too busy taking care of her to go to the doctor. So, I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of this family. His world changed when he wasn’t looking and he was too stubborn to notice, and it bit him in the ass. I’m willing to bet his stubbornness and his self reliance were key factors in him starting and running his own business. I’ve seen cases where someone’s personality meant they were good at starting and running a small businesses, but were completely unsuited to running a business of more than 2 or 3 people. Sometimes the things that help people succeed in one area of their life, can make them fail when circumstances change. He comes across as a dope in this instance, but I sure wish the republicans hadn’t hamstrung the ACA and the medicare expansion so that this poor sucker is going to go blind. Not that he doesn’t deserve some kind of correction for his bullheadedness, but now he’s going to be a burden on everyone, especially his family.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
So much this. The 1% are 1% of the vote. They need the 45% will-vote-GOP-no-matter-what base to get what they want. Those voters aren’t the victims of a vast con game. They know what they want, and they’re voting for it. They want to fuck the other guy if there’s even a chance he might be black. If that means taking it themselves from the rich, so be it.
Bobby Thomson
@Bobby Thomson: ack – thinks, not doesn’t think.
NonyNony
@Cacti:
Sounds like you agree with me more than @Punchy who says “Why the fuck should I care about a damn criminal? Eff this clown and his shitbag choices. Sucks that Fear of a Barack Planet has completely fucked his life; raysism has consequences, dudn’t it?”
I think the guy’s a moron. I also hope he gets help. I certainly hope he doesn’t die in a ditch and drag his wife along with him.
Snarki, child of Loki
@NonyNony:
THIS is the reason that all manner of misfortune should be visited upon conservative Republicans, to allow their mental and emotional abilities to grow to full human stature.
Our work will be (sorta) done, when Dubya is lying in the gutter, unemployed, starving, suffering from a painful debilitating disease for which he has no health coverage.
FlipYrWhig
@qwerty42:
What? No it isn’t. It’s called guilt. Comes natural to a lot of us.
SatanicPanic
I don’t want to mock the guy, because even hateful idiots deserve compassion
Tenar Darell
Posted
@Mnemosyne (tablet): @WereBear: I want to empathize. However, my empathasizer is broken.
If I was related to him, and living nearby in South Carolina, I’d be hollering at him so bad at the next family meeting. I would know I should feel something, but unfortunately the endless rejection of a helping hand turned me into someone who would prefer to yell at a sick person.
It’s like that joke about the guy during a terrible flood who has a police car, a rowboat, and a helicopter come by to evacuate him. He says to each rescuer “God will protect me.” while still refusing to leave. Then he dies, ends up in heaven, and asks God why he was allowed to drown. And God says, “I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter! How many rescues did you expect me to provide?!”
I wonder if that was the point? A deliberate red state strategy to frustrate everyone to the point that we no longer either want or are capable of sending lifeboats, and we are forced to watch as people insist on drowning. Turning all of our empathy off out of self-protective instinct.
Bobby Thomson
@Calouste: that doesn’t seem unbalanced to me. Not terribly liquid, but most people live paycheck to paycheck.
voncey
@Monala: I give you Craig T. Nelson; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U
Richard Shindledecker
Ya mean to tell me the Ku Klux Klowns of S BumFuxina don’t have a group policy. Who couldnude?
Cacti
The situation of Mr. Lang reminds me very much of this gif.
Belafon
@SatanicPanic: I don’t think compassion precludes “Stop being an idiot.”
ed_finnerty
@low-tech cyclist:
this made me laugh
Frankensteinbeck
To weigh in on the other ongoing argument, I still think he deserves all the help we can give him. Let conservatives say that only the deserving should be helped. Liberals help EVERYBODY, because life is hard enough as it is. Yes, even racist assholes.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
By Mittcare, do you mean a national version of the Massachusetts health care plan that Romney helped introduce before he pretended to know nothing about universal health care?
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
No, he means a national version of the Massachusetts health care plan that Romney was unable to veto because the state legislature had enough Democrats to override him.
SatanicPanic
@Belafon: this is true. Also, I think it’s mean to laugh at this guy, but I sympathize with that impulse. I won’t judge.
Tenar Darell
@gratuitous: Oops. Great minds think alike. I shoulda read through the whole thread.
Betty Cracker
@Calouste: And a $300K house in South Carolina. That’s more than twice the regional average.
Alex S.
Remember, that was the republican argument: “We don’t need Obamacare becaus we’ve already got it, if you go to the emergency room, you’ll be cared for.”
This man accepted that argument and cannot cross the line and accept that maybe, just maybe, he fell for a lie. These people are lost to reason.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@FlipYrWhig:
In all seriousness, if you are someone who can easily admit to his faults and mistakes and immediately seek out help when you realize you need it, you are more mature than 90 percent of the adult population, including myself.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Xenos: It’s my own fault, but I’d like to blame you for my descent down the badger hole of a shitty website. I won’t of course, because I was the one who let my curiosity about
get the better of me. I will now repair to the shower with a 10% bleach solution.
Mandalay
@Tyro:
Because this guy didn’t murder a black teenager?
Cacti
@Bobby Thomson:
That’s why I’ve never been fond of the distinction between “middle class” and “working class”.
Unless you’re in a situation where you could afford to never have to work again if you lost your livelihood tomorrow, you’re part of the working class.
OzarkHillbilly
@mac007: Not that I wish blindness on him but Why not? HE would wish blindness (and worse) on others by denying them the ACA.
Punchy
@NonyNony: I’m sorry I cant feel sorry for everyone. I’m deeply sorry for those who get lung cancer from non-smoking-related causes. I lack any emotion for the pack-a-days who get any malady. Insanely stupid choices by adults despite ubiquitous warnings have requisite consequences. Full stop.
I guess I’m just an uncaring asshole. Either that, or I have a non-limitless amount of shits to give, and I give them selectively.
NorthLeft12
I read through the article, and was surprised how the writer presented the facts of the case. She subtly pointed out all the poor and idiotic choices this guy made to land himself in this predicament. I especially liked the line about how no one should expect to not pay into insurance when you are healthy, and then sign up when you get sick and expect full benefits.
The guy is an idiot freeloader who relied on his luck for too long. I mean, he should have been doing back flips when the ACA was passed, but he was too cheap and too stupid to take advantage of it.
Who should pay for his operation? In a sane first world country, it would be covered by the health care system that every citizen is a part of, and has paid into all their working life through the taxes you pay.
In the US right now [in this case]? GoFundMe; his family and friends; a generous doctor/clinic/hospital; or an unknown benefactor.
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker:
His job was maintaining foreclosed properties. I wonder if he picked up that $300K house for a song after a foreclosure.
shell
Buying insurance IS paying your own medical bills. One ER visit drained his savings and if he doesn’t get any significant help he’ll end up depending on governement assistance. Every other taxpayer will be paying his bills.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: More generically any form of similar plan like the Mass healthcare or the ACA that was not enacted by a black Democratic president. Key word being the black part.
My thought is that he’s a fool, but he only “prided” himself on paying his own bills because no private insurance company would ever give him a policy.
Given no pre-existing conditions clause, and a reasonable premium, ISTM that a 50 yr old smoker and diabetic would have got insurance.
Except, IMO, for that whole racist thing and how he’s better than them, so take your Not Fair Health Care and shove it, blackie!
Karen in GA
@Mustang Bobby:
Already has. The comments are fun. (I think it’s linked in the article.)
ETA: Ah, I’m late. As usual. Hey, whaddayagonnado.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
There is not an exact parallel, but you are sounding a bit like Michelle Malkin with her granite countertop inspection.
scav
@SatanicPanic: The best I can manage is undoubtedly forgetting him by next week, with the name dropping off already. As for the mocking, I’m not really sure about that as it puts the feelings of the tender intolerant above the equally damnable physical consequences of the many more self-aware, equally unlucky people who are not making personal and political hay by grandstanding. He’s in with the muddle for actual health care and that’ll work out as that will work out.
Calouste
@Bobby Thomson: If you have a 3,300 square foot home and you live paycheck-to-paycheck, you choose to do so, you don’t have to do so. A normal family can comfortably live in a house 1/2 to 2/3 of that size.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
I was thinking the same.
I lived in North Carolina for 11 years, and unless you’re living in some posh SC locale like Hilton Head, $300k in South Carolina would get you a huge spread.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Germy Shoemangler: I’d bet money on it.
NorthLeft12
@NorthLeft12: I really don’t mean to sound too harsh, but guys like this really grind my gears. We have people like this in Canada too, but our socialist system mostly protects them from their own stupidity. Well, at least with respect to health issues like this.
And you know, that is what drives some of these guys crazy too. They know if it wasn’t for some government program, they would have bankrupted themselves and their family, or worse, assisted in the disability or death of a family member because they avoided seeking medical help because of the cost. YIKES!
Patrick
I remember during the infamous townhall meetings where people like Lang would shout “why should I pay for somebody else’s medical bills”. I assume Mr Lang is now asking why the rest of should pay for his medical bills. It’s the same dwarfed logic.
Instead of badmouthing our President, he should support universal healthcare.
kc
I’m afraid I don’t.
Germy Shoemangler
@NorthLeft12: I’m always amazed by Canadian conservatives. There is a libertarian cartoonist up there who argues against gov. interference in his life, but he enjoys the healthcare system and has accepted grants (Canadian Council For The Arts) to do his comic books.
They just baffle me.
Villago Delenda Est
@Iowa Old Lady: The day you file, that’s the day your payments start, once your application is approved. It arrives in a lump sum, then the monthly checks start flowing.
The stupid…IT FUCKING BURNS
Belafon
Part of his rage is an attempt to keep from having to admit that liberals were right.
Tim C.
@mac007:
This. Very much this. It’s one thing to appreciate the irony and even justice of his situation. But part of the liberal ethic is we want everyone to get healthcare, even the undeserving, even the wicked.
It’s no different from my opposition to the death penalty. It’s not my place or the place of the state to hand out death. Even if I think someone is a monster.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: Oh bullshit. Malkin was inspecting people’s countertops to prevent children from getting health insurance coverage. I’m pointing out that an asshole who actively worked to prevent poor people from getting health insurance because bootstraps and is actually crying poor now due to his own shitty planning is a fucking hypocrite, albeit one who should get coverage, not sympathy. It’s not a parallel, you moron. It’s a perpendicular.
Cacti
@kc:
Same here.
Empathize – understand or share the feelings of another
Sympathize – feel or express sympathy
I sympathize with the possibility that Mr. Lang may lose his vision and his livelihood.
I do not empathize with his lifetime of looking down on others, and thinking that he should now be jumped to the head of the line because he’s better than “them”.
catclub
@NorthLeft12: I thought much the same things. It was a good article. The interesting thing to me was the picture of the Eye Doctor/Surgeon. It seemed like an advertisement for him, but kind of an odd place for one.
Tommy
@Cacti: I live in a large house. Five bedroom house. I have rooms in my house I have not been in the last year. A $3 thousand dollar house is twice where I live.
chopper
@Hillary Rettig:
another sign of GOP thinking – she thinks they should fail upward.
catclub
@Calouste: Remember the start of the article, where it says that he contracts for the US Gov. and banks managing foreclosed houses? I bet that is part of how he got this large house.
“They live in a 3,300-square-foot home in the Legacy Park subdivision valued at more than $300,000.”
It does not say they own, or are paying on a mortgage on this house.
Paul in KY
@Chris: People will be lying & getting donations for fake illnesses, etc.
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: Saw them play at Bunbury last year. Great band!
chopper
as much as i want to feel for the guy, the bag of fucks is a little low right now.
Cacti
@Tommy:
Per Zillow, the Median home value in all of South Carolina is $134,500.
The value of Mr. Lang’s property is probably in the 90th percentile or above for the entire state.
Keith G
I feel bad for the guy. He fucked up big time and it has/will cost him and his family dearly.
Karen in GA
From where? He and his kind have repeatedly voted to have that help eliminated, or never offered to begin with.
D58826
@catclub:
Ah correct me if i”m wrong but isn’t this the same government that the state of SC succeed from and which is a hot bed for drown the beast in a bathtub. Wouldn’t this guy qualify as one of Mir Romney’s moochers and takers living off a federal government check.
Maybe this guy should give Rand Paul a call. I’m sure Rand does eye surgery for free to the deserving moochers.
sigaba
@mac007: It would be easier to be gracious if this guy showed an ounce of regret or introspection.
If you spend your life trying to burn down the Midnight Mission, they still might give you a free dinner, but you gotta give up your matches at the door.
Villago Delenda Est
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude): These people DESERVE to be serfs. They are utterly unworthy of the fruits of the Enlightenment.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Eric U.: Afriend’s elderly mother feel and hit her head a couple of years ago…
No real injury and a 4 hr trip to the hospital, including tests, cost $16K…
Michael G
I’d give him some $$ but I donated all my spare cash to a marriage-inequality pizza joint in Indiana.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
They’re a bit more than that because they almost all vote, while people at the bottom of the 99% tend not to vote much. Some of that is because non-citizens tend to be lower on the ladder, some of it is from voter suppression, but a distressingly large amount is apathy. We need to do something about that apathy if we’re going to make things better.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Always a factor to consider. Sometimes those evil liberals actually have thought some things through and really are looking out for everyone’s best interest, because it’s the right fucking thing to do.
Bill
@OzarkHillbilly: Because an eye for an eye – in the end – leaves everybody blind.
Said some famous person once….
Rheinhard
@FlipYrWhig:
Can’t be sure about him, but looking at the comments on the original news story in the Herald Online, there certainly is at least one other jerk who does think that!
boatboy_srq
@John:
IOW, you are significantly different from Lang, because your legislature and governor didn’t go Full Metal Wingnut on healthcare (how many of the ones approving that did you vote for, BTW?). It’s a small thing, but then so is the premium on a Bronze plan.
So it’s Newscorp’s fault and SC’s fault that he’s crazy enough to a) attempt to self-insure as a practical health insurance approach and b) think that $9k in the bank is enough to cover medical catastrophe? I’m only half kidding here. Terror is a Newscorp tool: it keeps voters in line, pushing Reichwing nonsense, and voting GOTea every election, despite the damage that does to most of them; and it affords geniuses like Nikki Haley the opportunity to attempt the Kansas Solution which only makes Lang’s situation worse. But he’s terrified now, now it’s far too late to do anything besides beg for help, and he wasn’t frightened enough before when saving even a little more might have made the situation less dire or less unplanned.
Where’s his church/synagogue/mosque in this? Are his neighbors doing anything to help out? Or is he “insufficiently Elect” and “getting what comes to him (for being unwealthy enough)”? Again, only half kidding; Newscorp and the GOTea have been insisting for nearly a decade that church and community are all Good Patriotic Ahmurrcans™ need, and the Xtians have been insisting that anyone not rich is an Unworthy Sinner™; so while his neighbors and religious community should be rallying to his aid, chances are they aren’t because he isn’t good enough. And he’s been a private contractor for all this time, so the banks he’s worked for, instead of enrolling him in their employee health plans, are likely drooling to add his house to their inventory of foreclosed properties.
Panic over the consequences of bad decisions is not grounds for empathy.
I’m in the same ethnic demographic, and I’ve been without health insurance for a significant amount of time in the not-so-distant past, either from underemployment or from FSMawful employer-sponsored options; had anything really nasty happened I’d have sworn a blue streak, but it wouldn’t have been at Obama and the ACA – possibly because I’m adult enough to recognize that my own choices have their own consequences.
Not likely. In fact, there’s a good chance he’ll think of them as “suckers” who make too much money and deserve to get grifted as he pays off his treatments with their dollars. He didn’t bother with SSD as Iowa Old Lady just pointed out – so he’s deliberately refusing additional help just because he’s entitled and impatient. I’ll admit I feel something here – but it’s mostly offset by the recognition that Lang is in queue for his Darwin Award whenever his
donationsentitlements run dry and the long slow painful demise he’s manufactured for himself finally occurs. I don’t mean to sound heartless but it’s difficult to sympathize with someone who broke the law out of misguided principles, flouted common sense by refusing to set aside a big enough cushion, and is blaming everyone EXCEPT himself for the misfortune that being a spendthrift lawbreaker has visited on him. I’m glad he’s getting help – but I don’t expect him to learn anything from the experience.Karen in GA
@Punchy:
As an ex-smoker, I have a bit more sympathy. From what I understand, most smokers start young, when they’re dumb and feeling invincible, and thinking they won’t get hooked.
If it were a real choice, I’d have quit when I was much younger, during one of my earlier failed attempts. The addiction part of it makes it a bit less of a choice than it seems.
Corner Stone
@catclub: I thought that was odd too. Fun loving little pic of the eye doctor amidst this tale of woe.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
Malkin was inspecting countertops to persuade people that a specific family were not needy enough to receive certain government benefits, and you are analyzing property prices in South Carolina to persuade people that Lang could have afforded ACA health insurance. You are both sniffing their assets.
But well done for stating the motherfucking obvious I suppose.
Helen
One thing that has been lost in discussion:
So. He’s a government moocher?
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: Good band – but in context more appropriate character (Roald Dahl donchano). “Daddy, I want a golden goose – NOW!”
Roger Moore
@shell:
This. I wish more people would make this point. Being responsible is about paying into the system so you can get your share if/when you need it. Trying to cover everything yourself seems like it’s being self sufficient, but it means you’ll wind up begging for charity the moment your resources are overwhelmed.
Elie
Actually, from what I read, his eye issue was a result of the consequences of long untreated diabetes. All that time this guy was “self sufficient”, he was just ignoring his own needs to sustain that fantasy. Of course, the power of that delusion makes it impossible for him to revisit that delusion so all that terrific emotional turmoil has to go somewhere — Mr Obama — it HAD to be you…
I expect however, after all the stormin’ is done, that he is going to be an extremely depressed person. Obama will have left office and he will be looking in the mirror (with any eyesight that remains). He forgot. Sooner or later the laws of physics always catch up. Wiley Coyote sooner or later can’t run on air anymore…
Calouste
@Mandalay:
What part of Affordable Care Act do you not understand?
sigaba
@Tyro:
George Zimmerman was on Fox News and CNN. This guy is in the Charlotte Observer. There are desperate famous people, but most of the time people are just desperate.
Charity is always going to be subject to a benefactor effect, where people give to things in proportion to how likely they notice them, and how likely they are noticed for giving, and this creates a positive feedback resulting in a few “desperation celebrities” who get huge amounts of help (usually far in excess of their need).
The end result is a cultural narrative or understanding, where people just assume that everyone who ever needs money can just go on IndieGoGo and The System Works.
Also this brings up the Memories Pizza case, where they said something mildly anti-gay on TV, got a lot of mean reviews on Yelp, and then took that to Glenn Beck’s website and raised half a million dollars. It wasn’t even clear what they were going to spend the money on, and people who gave money didn’t even really know or care, all their funders really wanted as a big DISLIKE button on THE GAY, and Memories Pizza had the good fortune of getting on a camera and getting cross-linked by a bunch of conservative bloggers. All George Zimmerman’s funders wanted, in the end, was a big dislike button on HOODIE-THUG, and they got it. What Luis has to figure out is, what is his big dislike button going to be?
lol
@Frankensteinbeck:
The interesting thing about the 1% is that they have a voting rate approaching 100%.
In general, the more money you make, the more likely you are to vote. There are a lot of economic reasons why that’s true but it does put lie to the whole “If voting made a difference, they’d make it illegal.”
Voting is making a difference for the people who always vote.
Ben Cisco
@dedc79: The first non-sports comment thread I’ve read in that paper in a VERY long time that gave me any hope whatsoever for humanity.
boatboy_srq
@Chris: @sigaba: As a Republican, Lang almost certainly voted for Haley and the rest who spoke for him in Columbia and Washington to specifically make healthcare choices on his behalf – and those choices amounted to “NO!!11!1!”. He’s getting exactly what his elected officials campaigned on, and for which he likely voted. So not only did he select this for himself, he helped make this selfsame choice for his entire state.
Belafon
I see Kaili at Wonkette feels like a lot of us:
It’s the hypocrisy that’s most annoying.
Mandalay
@Calouste:
I understand it very well. I just find the effort some folks here are putting in to pointing out that Lang could and should have got health insurance completely fucking moronic.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Racist? How do you figure? You really think this dummy would have signed up for the ACA if it had been implemented under, say, Hillary Clinton?
Does no one else remember the 90’s?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Then let me add to the chorus: Fuck you, Mrs Grundy. The whole idea of the individual mandate is that everyone should get insurance, and the point of this discussion is he could have, but he’s a hateful, probably racist, asshole, and he decided to sacrifice his health, his vision and maybe his life to his hatred of Obama.
jl
Granite counter tops costs 300K? Who knew?
kc
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yeah, I saw that too. Unbelievable.
I think the best part, though, is how he has had diabetes, which apparently played a part in his current condition, and hasn’t quit smoking. In fact there’s a pack of cigs sticking out of his pocket in the photo accompanying the article.
kc
@mac007:
You are correct, of course, and I hope he gets the surgery he needs.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: I’m not “sniffing his assets,” you twit; the assets were volunteered in the goddamned article, as was the statement from the subject’s own pie-hole that he knew he was supposed to buy insurance and declined to do so because he “prided himself” on paying out of pocket rather than submitting his neck to Obama’s boot. I said upthread (long before you made your first stupid comment) that I wish that particular asshole and every other asshole were covered; I’m just declining to feel sorry for the fool. But yeah, aside from intent, tactics and reality, that’s parallel to Malkin’s gambit.
Tree With Water
Even the most empathetic of people can only sympathize so far with a very stupid person. And on top of it all, this fool from South Carolina made his living, in part, by maintaining federal properties? I’m always amazed that people that stupid manage to live as long as they do.
Belafon
@Tree With Water: Conservatives outnumber liberals at the government contractor I work for about 6 to 1, and they complain about paying taxes.
JPL
@Michael G: Please leave that comment on his side. It would give him another excuse to blame Obama.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@lol: Interesting observation about Los Angeles voting rates:
boatboy_srq
@kc: Racist d0gsh!t, sexist d0gsh!t. Distinction without difference here. I remember the 90s: “Hillarycare” was all over the RWNM, and there was plenty of nastiness about who was really in charge in the Clinton WH. If anything, the GOTea should be at once happy that HRC is running in her own name – and racing to SCOTUS to invoke the 22nd Amendment because they’re convinced she’s already had her two terms (1993-2000).
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
According to the great god Wiki:
In 2006, when the bill passed, Romney signed the legislation, but vetoed 8 sections of the bill. The legislature subsequently overrode all of Romney’s vetoes.
Note that I am not giving Romney big credit here, but noting his strange irrational cowardice in being involved at all in getting health care to the people of Massachusetts, and then pretending that he wasn’t even in the state when all this went down.
And yeah, there should be a special place in hell for all the Republicans who want to insist that ACA is Obama Muslim Communism and ignore the precedent set by Massachusetts, with GOP involvement.
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: Figured you were talking about the character the band is named after. Just wanted to give a shout out to them as they played a great set (and I had never heard of them before they appeared on the lineup).
Patrick
This guy would have been against universal healthcare, which is the least complex of them all. So I really don’t understand what they are complaining about.
catclub
@dedc79: I suggested up above that the comments there are moderated.
Mike in NC
Zero empathy for this dumbass teabagger.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Do you really not see that the fact that the guy could have purchased insurance but chose not to do so matters to the story? If not for that, he would simply be a guy in a bad situation.
sigaba
@boatboy_srq: He made a mistake, we can forgive people that if they recognize the error of their ways. I wouldn’t bump him to the front of the line or anything but I think we all agree that somebody shouldn’t go blind because he missed an open enrollment period, that’s what he should be complaining about.
You know when people ignore proximate problems (the insurance rules aren’t optimal) and instead rant about “tyranny,” and “socialism” and philosophy of government, that’s just their way of saying they have absolutely no idea what to do. If somebody’s playing on the train tracks you still gotta help them off if they get their foot caught, even if they loudly protest the whole time that they have a God-given right to play on railroad tracks. If you let him rot then you’re really just proving the worst fears of the crackpots– Obamacare only works for the politically loyal.
Hoodie
@Belafon: At the defense contractor I worked at in the 90’s, we had feds come in and arrest a gang of “tax protesters” who thought they could refuse to pay taxes because of some bizarre interpretation of the Constitution.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@SFAW:
It’s not from Pohl and it’s actual provenance ought to make you reconsider both the quote’s appropriateness and the stance you derive from it. It comes from the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle novel Oath of Fealty. You know, the Jerry Pournelle that’s a racist, libertarian scumbag.
I must say that you are getting your lack of empathy from an expert.
Omnes Omnibus
@sigaba:
No, Obamacare only works for those who sign up for insurance.
Bobby Thomson
@Calouste: yep, this is the granite countertops argument.
sigaba
@Omnes Omnibus:
And that’s not right.
Tenar Darell
I wonder how many GoFundMe pages there are for liberals in refusal states who fall into the coverage gap? Maybe I’ll go donate there. This guy and his wife don’t really make me want to override my distaste for GoFundMe by donating to them.
singfoom
Yes, the guy is an idiot. No, Obama has no blame here. Yes, it is enjoyable to bask in the schadenfreude of an idiot who made bad decisions because of seemingly ignorant political beliefs.
No, he doesn’t deserve to die in the gutter. No, he doesn’t deserve to go blind. Yes, it would be good if he gave up the bullshit about tyranny and socialism and a complex bill and admit that he fucked up, that not being insured was a bad idea and not signing up for Obamacare at the appropriate time was a bad idea.
All that said, as much as I think this guy is a raging hypocritical asshole with absolutely zero ability to realize that his problems are all self-inflicted, I hope he gets the healthcare that he needs and doesn’t go blind.
I’ve got health issues of my own and I’ve got insurance and always have otherwise the insurance companies would have dumped me years ago and I know the frustration and the anger that follows when you feel helpless because of a medical condition.
FlipYrWhig
@sigaba:
What evidence is there that he’s recognized the error of his ways? He decided not to be insured, then he feels like whining because he’s not insured. Yeah, not having money to pay for things in catastrophic conditions pretty much sucks. Kind of why there have been centuries worth of attempts to figure out concepts like “mutual insurance.”
sigaba
@FlipYrWhig: He totally hasn’t, I didn’t mean to imply that.
PurpleGirl
@sigaba: No, it is right. There have been two (2) enrollment periods during which he could have enrolled and he didn’t on purpose. He could have checked the deadlines and the rules and he waited until it was too late. He did not search out his options. He’s a fool and an ass. He shouldn’t go blind, I hope he raises what he need on his GoFundMe site and then next year enrolls in an insurance program. I hope he applies for SSDI, by now, he’s disabled enough to probably be eligible for it.
But IF he thinks about it for just a few minutes, he might realize that pre-ACA, with his diabetes and (probably) hypertension he would not have gotten insurance because of pre-existing condition exclusions.
FlipYrWhig
@sigaba: That’s what has me pissed off. It’d be one thing if he said, “Damn, I figured I was working hard and playing by the rules my whole life and I never really realized what a mess I could get into. I never liked Obamacare because I didn’t like the idea of paying for other people when I’m not so well off myself, but I REALLY don’t like that something that I thought was supposed to help me isn’t there when I know I need it. I’m fucked and it’s not fair.” That would be at least the opening for a dialogue. That’s a Teachable Moment ™. But instead he’s just doing a version of Bender’s “This is the worst kind of discrimination, the kind against me!”
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Oh, I definitely didn’t say that. But blaming myself for things, THAT I can do in a snap!
kc
@singfoom:
Yes, what you said.
boatboy_srq
@sigaba: @FlipYrWhig: Lang didn’t “miss an open enrollment period”. He refused to even consult the calendar looking for it until he suddenly had major medical expenses. Reading a bit between-the-lines here, but he didn’t buy health insurance as a twenty-something because he was predictably immortal; didn’t buy it as a thirty-something because he didn’t like the price tag; and didn’t buy it as a forty-something because his perspective on the value of the dollar made him think that high four figures in a savings account would be enough to pay for an ER visit if it were ever necessary, just like Shrub told him. He not only refused to enroll for ACA because Obummer, but voted into positions of authority people who fought for all the roadblocks that now exist to the ACA and threw out Medicaid expansion, all because Moochers and Takers and Tyranny; so in effect he robbed all his neighbors of this last safety net at the same time he refused it for himself. His last employment was making money off the banks and Fannie/Freddie when they took people’s homes away from them. This wasn’t some recent development: it is the latest event in a long predictable trend. He has also not “recognize[d] the error of [his] ways” anywhere near so much as suddenly discovered that there’s Free Gubmint Money to help him with an emergency, and discovered that it’s actually either a private insurance policy (complete with all the prerequisites, made available through highly-publicized means and at well-advertised dates, and expressly constrained from allowing people to do what he’s trying to do – which is skate by without participating until he’s faced with catastrophe and buying in at that point and creating a tremendous loss for his insurer) or Medicaid (which his state explicitly refused, likely with his own approval and support).
I’m glad Lang is getting help, but I’m not about to spare him a picojoule of the “you had this coming” energy directed his way.
kc
@boatboy_srq:
Okay, do you think if the ACA had been implemented under a white male Democratic president, Lang would be all for it? Because I don’t.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl:
Sadly, he might not realize this at all, especially since he previously thought that he did not need health insurance at all. He and people like him probably need a primer on what the health insurance battle was all about, with a little section on pre-existing conditions.
Bill
@kc: “Racist? How do you figure? You really think this dummy would have signed up for the ACA if it had been implemented under, say, Hillary Clinton?”
The fact that Mr. Lang is sexist does not exclude the possibility that he’s also racist.
FlipYrWhig
@kc: Definitely not. Because all Democratic presidents are welfare-lovers who take hardworking people’s hard-earned money and lavish it on mooching layabouts who load up their shopping carts with crab legs and have fancy manicures. Taking a stand against that is what the Republican Party promises its voters.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator:
He knows what it was about: giving free stuff to lazy colored people. He doesn’t know what it was _really_ about, but that’s what it boils down to.
Jeffro
@Paul in KY: They’re back out on tour this summer, with a new album to boot!
Monala
@PurpleGirl: In fact, they extended the open enrollment period by two months (from Feb. 15th to April 17th) for anyone who owed the tax penalty for being uninsured in 2014 (and one would hope that his tax preparer or the software program he used, if he used either, informed him of this), just to give them a second chance to sign up (or fourth chance — since there was a 2014 open enrollment period, and then a 2014 extension, and a 2015 open enrollment period, and a 2015 extension).
boatboy_srq
@kc: Actually, I do. There’s already been truckloads of discussion about the Heritage plan and the counterproposals to Clinton’s initiative in ’93, and more than a little discussion of Nixon’s considering a near-universal-option in the 70s. Any of those would be at least as good as what is in place now. I doubt that it would happen today, but that’s after six years of Teahad and ODS-affliction; but prior to 2008 there were plenty of opportunities, and several plans no worse if not somewhat better than the ACA.
The GOTea has done quite a number on public discourse and the positions Repubs have been willing to abandon simply because BHO hasn’t completely opposed them: Cap and Trade was common ground until 2009, end-of-life planning was apolitical until ACA, and the bank bailout and fiscal stimulus were dandy in ’08 but not in ’09, just to name a few. There are moments I think BHO could say something nice about puppies and sunshine, and the Reichwing would lament that the President hates kittens and is behind CA’s drought. Lang probably wouldn’t be happy with a healthcare plan put in place by a white male Dem, but it’s unlikely he’d be so rabidly opposed if it hadn’t been a proposal from BHO. TABMITWH explains far too much of Teahad policy for race not to play a role.
The Ancient Randonneur
Just wait it out Luis. Looks like you’ll be covered soon enough. Just not soon enough to save your sight. Of course, you could move to Vermont where they would probably cover you immediately.
Fair Economist
@kc:
My aunt is on oxygen for smoking-induced emphysema and she still can’t stay off cigarettes. They are very addictive.
boatboy_srq
@kc: THERE I’m willing to cut him some slack. We can’t at once b!tch about Big Tobacco and the toxic stew it’s made of its product, and complain that one of their customers is having a hard time quitting. Those aren’t his granddad’s Camels after all.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
You know, properly deployed schadenfreude should involve punching up, not down, and right now, punching this guy is pretty much the definition of punching down.
muddy
@The Ancient Randonneur: They probably would, but we don’t want him. Let him stay in SC where he fits in and feels comfortable. It’s way too cold here dude, you’d hate it. And he would likely die from a rage stroke anyway, just from being in the godless socialist paradise republic and seeing how oppressed we are with our health care, and fuel assistance and weatherization. Not to mention all the disgusting local food we eat and feed our kids in the schools. SO gross.
Iowa Old Lady
I would like this guy to get medical care. I also despise him.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
And Medicaid expansion only happened in states that accepted it.
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: In a country where ignorant crackers dominate politics, punching Luis Lang looks like up to me.
catclub
@Tenar Darell:
The coverage gap is: if you would qualify for Medicaid in a sane state, your income is too low to qualify for subsidies on the exchanges. I have always known that if you estimate your income too low – to get a bigger subsidy – that the IRS will get the extra subsidy back next year on your taxes. But if you qualify for medicaid in a sane state ( but do not live in one) that if you estimate a high enough income to be on the exchange, but then do not have that high an income during the year, I suspect that the IRS will not come after you for the subsidy you got. Has this been tested?
I know that the subsidies (and many of the limits on them) were set up to maintain certain budget targets for Obamacare, so this approach might get punished.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@FlipYrWhig: Then he’s not the only one with vision problems.
Gravenstone
@Patrick in Michigan: Reading comprehension problems there, buddy? Did you presume that Mnem’s comment was intended to apply to ALL white men? Then you’re a classic example of too stupid to breath.
As one white man to another, kindly fuck off yourself.
kc
@Fair Economist:
Don’t I know it; my grandmother had emphysema and smoked to the bitter end. And my mother tried to smuggle her cigs into the hospital for what turned out to be her terminal stay there.
SFAW
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Thanks for the correction. I remembered it was from Oath of Fealty (sort of), but was too lazy to look it up. And, of course, I had forgotten about Pournelle’s proclivities. I was just responding to OzarkHillbilly’s Darwin reference, thought it might be appropriate.
Especially since, in the book, the comment was made about people either (A) too fucking stupid to take care of themselves, or (B) thinking bad stuff won’t happen to them. Either one could apply to Mr. Lang.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
I was with you up to this point. The plain fact is that the bank bailout was not dandy in 2008. There was a lot of pushback against it, and it was voted down in the House the first time it was brought up, with most of the no votes coming from Republicans. Even the final bill got more no votes than yes votes from Republicans in the House.
Cousin Crispy
@Amir Khalid: I don’t know whether he wants to be mad at Obama, but that’s who faux noise tells him over and over is responsible for all his problems. So, of course he’s mad at Obama.
But, he lives in a $300000 house. Probably with wide screen TV’s and granite counter tops and smart phones. He can just sell that spendy house to fix his eyes. Simple enough.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: I’m willing to concede that the stimulus of ’09 wasn’t welcomed by the GOP; but similar actions in 08 were pushed hard by Shrub’s [mal]administration and had at least a fig leaf of bipartisan support.
SFAW
I thought of one more silver lining for Mr. Lang: now Cathy McMorris Rodgers will FINALLY have an anti-Obamacare story to put on her Facebook page. So that should bring the ratio up from zero to one-in-10,000.
Freedumb!
Calouste
@Bobby Thomson: Nope, the granite countertop was about whether this family whose kid had an accident was worthy of state insurance payments. Which is you know, what insurance is for, for unexpected problems. And what they paid taxes for.
This man lived a financial lifestyle where even minor medical problems would get him in trouble, and he didn’t insure himself against that. 9 grand is not going to get you very far in the medical world. He made that choice.
JohnK
Lang belongs to a tribe that will gofund $800,000 for a pizza parlor going out of business for refusing to serve LGBT but they won’t give him $2,000 to save his anti-obamacare life. Luis, nice tribe you got there buddy!
The Pale Scot
@gratuitous:
Me too
RSA
@kc:
Our experience was 18 months, which included getting turned down and having to hire a lawyer. (“Everyone gets turned down the first time,” our lawyer said.) And apparently this was relatively fast.
My (not well-informed) impression is that it takes so long because some people in our government are overly concerned about cheaters and free-riders, which leads to lots of checkpoints but not enough funding to do that checking quickly and efficiently.
If Lang is a conservative Republican, the system is working exactly as he wants it to.
Ben Cisco
@Chris:
Like this guy?
The Pale Scot
@Iowa Old Lady: I had a long enjoyable internet argument about the house burnt down guy. Olberman screwed up royally by representing it as he was being charged on top of the taxes he payed for fire service. He lived in an unincorporated area, the nearby town offered fire service subscription. Despite the fact that he A. all ready had had a fire last year and, B. burned his own garbage, he ignored the fire service offer again and just figured “help would come if there was an emergency”.
Reminds me of Chance’s black housekeeper in Being There shaking her head and remarking “only in a white man’s world” watching Chance on TV.
The Pale Scot
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Probably it’s that SC is like FL. Medicare is available to those under 18, over 65, pregnant or on disability. That’s it.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
No, I am with boatboy on this. The GOP leadership was in favor of the bank bailout, even if many in the rank and file were against. They worked with Pelosi to get it passed. That is in contrast to zero GOP votes for the 2009 stimulus in the House.
By comparison with the 2008 vote the 2009 vote was Heavily influenced by TABMITWH.
The Pale Scot
@Belafon: Really, what the hell was that
Lit3Bolt
The stupidity is just so…so…
I honestly wonder, how do people like drive in traffic or not set themselves on fire at the gas station?
gene108
I know this thread is dead, but their ain’t nothin’ stoppin’ Lang from buying insurance on the private market. He may not get Obamacare subsidies, but he can at least get something.
boatboy_srq
@gene108: Preexisting conditions are stopping Lang from entirely private coverage (diabetes and stroke). With either of those he’d be a very expensive customer; with both he’s definitely SOL. OTOH, assuming Lang gets effective treatment and recovers, he could definitely use projected income after treatment to at least try to qualify: as a (presumably) sole proprietor he should be able to estimate annual earnings reasonably accurately. I suspect he’d be in a slightly better condition if SC hadn’t thrown the GOTea wrench in the ACA Navigators’ works the way most Red states did. And the SC legislature isn’t making things any easier, either.
lgerard
@gene108:
Yes there is …..his cupidity. He is willing to get insurance now, but only if he gets a subsidy.
Just like 18 months ago when he was going to a doctor to treat his retinopathy. The doctor, taking pity on someone who could not get insurance at the time, charged him half price for his visits. When the ACA became effective, the doctor told him since he could now get insurance, he would have to pay full price in the future.
He then did the sane teabag thing….HE STOPPED GOING TO THE DOCTOR.
what could go wrong?
Chris
@kc:
I swear to God I’ll never understand this argument.
The vast majority of Republican voters support the GOP because of a perception that the Democratic Party is the party of These People, that’s gonna take your hard-earned money and give it all to them. Democrats are perceived as being a party for the black people and against the white ones, whatever skin color their public face happens to have at the moment. Obama is hated because he’s a n/gg/r, but Clinton was hated because he’s a n/gg/r-lover.
So yes, if Hillary Clinton had passed health care reform, this guy would be just as dead set against it; and yes, he would still be a racist.
lgerard
@boatboy_srq:
He did not stop working until 12/2014. Even in the extended April sign up period he could have used his 2014 income.
He just does not believe that he should have to pay for healthcare
catclub
@gene108: He could also go on the exchanges and pay full unsubsidized rates, which for someone expecting eye surgery, is by far the best way to pay for it.
Chris
@PurpleGirl:
He won’t realize it. One of the nice (for conservatives) side effects of these kinds of liberal reforms is that as soon as the problems they address are dealt with, you stop talking about it immediately and pretty soon people have forgotten. Kind of like how no one nowadays has any notion of just how horrific working conditions were before minimum wage, unions and worker protection laws, leaving conservatives free to chuckle that “come on, no one’s going to do that – what do you think businessmen are, cartoon villains?”
Ten years from now at the latest, I fully expect conservatives to be flat-out denying that there was ever a time when people were denied insurance for preexisting conditions.
boatboy_srq
@lgerard:
That is the best Reichwing case for single payer I’ve seen.
KithKanan
@catclub: No, he can’t. The open enrollment period is for all ACA compliant private coverage both on-exchange and off-exchange. If you don’t have a Qualifying Event, a private insurer can’t sell you ACA-compliant insurance outside of the open enrollment period.
KithKanan
Okay, I might have been wrong and you might still be able to buy some private insurance outside of open enrollment/special enrollment.
Still, I don’t think the pre-existing condition ban applies to any policy you could buy outside of open enrollment/special enrollment, and no insurer in their right mind would sell him a policy for cheaper than the cost of the care he already knows he’s going to need and can’t afford.
lgerard
@KithKanan:
There was an extra enrollment period this year in April for those who did not purchase insurance in 2014 and then paid the small tax penalty for not enrolling.
It was another attempt to make this idiot proof. Obviously, not all idiots got it
Chris
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s not punching up or punching down, it’s punching back.
And it’s not punching. At the moment, it’s, at most, yelling. If we were trying to campaign to have him denied coverage, that would be punching, but we’re not – it’s pretty clear that most of us here do want him to have coverage.
But fuck, I’m not going to diss anyone for telling him “sir, you are a piece of human garbage, you brought every last bit of this onto yourself, and there are thousands of people who did not sign up for this but are still suffering through it anyway because of you. Have a nice day and fuck yourself” when they hand over the medicine.
smintheus
Sounds like he has been blind to his own interests already for a long time.
Earl
First, this unbelievable prick decides to scam insurance: he waits until he gets sick then wants to buy into insurance (and will, no doubt, stop paying for insurance the hot second his treatment is finished.) So basically he’s a moocher who thinks you, me, and every other person in the us owes him a strings-free quarter million dollars or more of medical treatment just for fucking showing up? And while he’s healthy he doesn’t have to contribute; no cost sharing or cost pooling for him, no sirree, but when *he* gets sick, well now, that’s fucking different — all of us need to pony up?
And on top of that, he’s a Republican who loves shitting down on others until he needs help? Then he whines when he’s on the receiving end of the treatment he supports giving others?
Where and how is this guy deserving of any sympathy at all?
Fighting providing health insurance to all until *you* need it makes you a classic republican: Fuck you, I’ve got mine. Well now he’s reaping his rewards.
I don’t feel a bit badly about pointing and laughing.
He’s got a house he can sell. Let him die penniless just like he no doubt continues to believe everyone else who suffers a medical misfortune should do.
pseudonymous in nc
And lives in Fort Mill, SC because NORTH CAROLINA TYRANNY. Fort Mill’s essentially the Charlotte suburbs, but over the state line, so: lower taxes, more space for McMansions, and a school district that doesn’t need to spend money on Those People. Of course, that also means no Medicaid beyond the barest of minimums.
Basic point: an individual person can’t pay for serious healthcare out of pocket. It is not priced for end-user purchase. However, all of us collectively can pay for all our healthcare, even the serious stuff, and civilised countries have worked out various ways to do that.
chrome agnomen
his family values sure didn’t include being his brother’s keeper, but now he wonders where his family is? heh. go ask the fox family where they went. hint: a lot of them moved to S Carolina.
feebog
As someone who has had multiple retina tears in one eye and lost most of my vision in that eye, I sympathize with this guy. Losing your sight is no fun. But he could have prevented it, or at least mitigated the loss by getting insurance under the ACA the first year it was available. But no, he has his fucking principles and no Obamacare for him!
Alan Grayson had it right. This is the Republican insurance plan; don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly. Welcome to Republican world Mr. Lang.
Patricia Kayden
@John: I really wish progressives would stop donating their money to these Rightwingers idiots. There are so many more worthy causes. Let Luis lay in the bed he made.
jefft
@mac007: “liberal means having compassion for others, even those who make stupid fucking mistakes”
He did not make a “mistake” – “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” – being a free rider was part of his scheme. He didn’t want to pay, but expected to mooch off those who do
I have no more “compassion” for this parasite then I do for someone who killed his parents looking for sympathy because he is an orphan
Gex
@Chris: this. Atwater said it best: GOP policies hurt black people more. Guys like Lang were so ecstatic at the idea of hurting blacks they didn’t care to listen to the “more” part and realize that voting GOP was hurting them too.
r€nato
this is a perfect opportunity for someone like Michael Moore to go knocking on the doors of the Koch Bros, the RNC, every single GOP member of Congress who was the loudest about opposition to ACA, and even the Heritage Foundation that first proposed the individual mandate and ask for donations for Mr. Lang.
That. Would. Be. Hilarious.
r€nato
@NonyNony: You’re almost there. The key is the dingbat wife’s “No Fair Act” comment. She and perhaps both clearly believe that all the nigras are getting millions in free stuff and Obamaphones from The Great Kenyan Satan and why can’t they be put at the front of the line in their time of need because they are such very special snowflakes? Obummer hates white people, that’s why.
r€nato
@Hillary Rettig: haven’t you seen how WHITE she is?
r€nato
@FlipYrWhig: ahhh someone finally picked up on that. Even though these two tools never made an overtly racist comment in that article, I can read between the lines… shocked they didn’t drop the N bomb on the reporter.
r€nato
@mac007: I don’t think he should go blind or be without any medical care either, just because he is aggressively, deliberately stupid and doesn’t share my political beliefs. Those of you who wish him to go blind or dead should think about how you felt when that crowd at the 2012 GOP primary debate lustily cheered the notion of someone dying from a lack of ability to pay for medical care.
But whether he deserves help paying for his bills… that’s another thing entirely. Seems like he could really benefit from a healthy dose of humility.
r€nato
@Chris: RUFKM? So what is the monthly fee for? It sounds like a charge for the privilege of begging? And how would anybody be able to put up, up front, the cost of their care when it easily reaches five figures just for a couple days of treatment or ER?
r€nato
@Hoodie: It was just one guy but in the 1990s I worked at a semi-well-known defense contractor and one of the engineers there casually let me know during the course of a typical workplace conversation that he was in trouble with the feds for not filing tax returns. Seemed like he thought it was perfectly reasonable for him to just allow the feds to keep all his withholding tax every year and not bother him with filling out the tax returns. We’re all good, right Uncle Sam?
I repeat, this was an ENGINEER. They are highly intelligent and at the same time, not always the brightest students in the class.
SFAW
@r€nato:
Are you trying to tell me it’s not (perfectly reasonable)?
Shit.
(Leaves keyboard to answer the loud knocking at the door …)
Joe
The strange thing is that after he goes blind he will probably be on SS disability for the rest of his life thereby becoming a ward of the state.