The Guy From South Carolina Who Didn’t Get ObamaCare

Last week a story went viral about a guy in South Carolina who didn’t get ObamaCare and ended up needing it. Lots of people, mostly Liberals, stepped up to the plate and helped fund a crowd funding campaign for his medical expenses… but not without a little “ObamaCare shaming”.

Here a Summary of the Story

• Guy (Luis Lang) doesn’t get ObamaCare (ie get health insurance with assistance due to income) because he is a Republican and doesn’t want help from the Government and wants to do it himself.
• Guy has diabetes. Diabetes gets bad after a Stroke. He loses his ability to work because he starts to go blind.
• Guy goes to get medical care and realizes that medical care without insurance is F’n unaffordable.
• Guy would have got Medicaid, but South Carolina didn’t expand Medicaid. Thus he had no coverage options (although after he goes blind SC will step in at that point via Medicare, not economical but does stop those bottom feeders from mooching on state dollars.) NOTE: Yes, this author is “ObamaCare shaming” South Carolina for not expanding Medicaid.
• Guy realizes oh… “affordable” “care” act… As in I pay what I can now so I don’t stick the state with giant medical bills later when I really, really, for real have no choice but to get care. Oh, I get it now. Wish they would have just called it that instead of ObamaCare.
• Author says, ” yeah this is why politicizing the ACA and opting-out for freedom is sort of evil and the denial of Medicaid expansion makes no sense economically”.
• Anyway, people are funding the campaign… but there is lots of “ObamaCare shaming” going on in the process. It’s tempting to be like “I told you so”. But the truth is, we are all in this together. It’s not cool that “guy” can’t get care when he needs it, it’s unfair that 30-ish million others can’t either. So by all means donate, but keep it classy… and if you are going to shame anyone lets start with the state leaders who are the ones blocking Medicaid expansion. At the end of the day, it is South Carolina’s refusal of Medicaid expansion which has got this guy in a bind.

Here is his story:

“My name is Luis Lang and I live in ft. mill sc and Several months ago I was told that I had suffered several mini strokes over a period of 3-5 days. Because of this a eye condition that I have has come back with a vengeance. I suffer from Diabetic retinopathy. Because of my condition I have not worked since December. I tried to sign up for the affordable healthcare act but I was refused. And since in SC tghey have not expanded the medicaid program I have fallen into the so called dounot hole. I was told about 1 1/2 years ago about my eyes and found a doctor that worked on a sliding scale for paitints like myself without insurance.My visit were $80.00 per treatment. And I had 3 treatment but when I went in for my next appointment the cost went from $80 to $610. I asked why and was told since the healthcare act was now in place that he could not give me the discount that he was giving me. So at that point I stop treatment but that was ok becouse my eyes were much better. But because of the strokes and stress it has come back with a vengeance like I said before. At this point I’m looking at $10,000 – $30,000 in treatment or I will go blind.  At the moment I am down to about 20% in my left eye and about 30% vision in my right eye. So I do need to apologize about my spelling because I can not see very well. I have tried every organization out there but I’m either to young ot to old for there program. I am to old because i am older then 10 and to young because i am not 65 yet I am only 49. As each day goes by my vision get worst. And if I do go blind it will take surgary to get my vision bac if they can.Thank you and god bless. This is why I started this go fund me page so that I can get the treatment that I need.”

You can read the original story from the Charlotteobserver.com here and you can check out his crowd funding campaign here.

Random “ObamaCare Shaming” from the GoFundMe page:

“Here’s another five bucks from a liberal, anti-racist. Please don’t use your repaired sight just to watch Fox News. Try PBS once in awhile.”

“Let’s re-cap shall we? You have diabetes, yet you continue to smoke. You let two open enrollment periods for the ACA go by without signing up for insurance. You were gainfully employed, yet chose to not purchase health insurance for yourself or your family. Now that you have reaped what you have sown, you expect other people to GIVE you to thousands of dollars you need for your medical procedures, preferably while you keep your $300k house. And on top of that, you want to blame Obama for your troubles. How’s that “personal responsibility” thing working out for you?”

“I want to donate enough to really help you out, but I can’t figure out how to get GoFundMe to accept bootstraps.”

“If only there was some type of program that would allow people to pay money into a pool even if they were healthy so that if the time ever came when they would need it, they would not have to worry about losing evetrything they worked for. Maybe they could even have a preexisting condition and not have to worry about it being covered. Oh, and if they couldn’t afford the premium, maybe the state they live in could expand medicaid so it it can help them afford it. A subsidy, if you will. If that was offered by the Federal Government to states it would be CRAZY for the states to deny that to their citizens. Yeah, if only.”

– Sincerely, Bordering on not classy, but admittedly funny, “ObamaCare shaming” people.

Author’s Conclusion

As long as we lack Universal coverage there will always be some American out there who suffers due to their income and/or ideology.

We don’t have a Medicare-for-all solution, but we do have the ACA and that can in theory be close to enough to achieve near universal coverage. If we all get covered under the current system and states expand Medicaid, and SCOTUS doesn’t make subsidies illegal, maybe sometime in the next decade-ish we can get pretty close to eliminating this sort of thing.