Medicare patients opposed to affordable health care for everyone else.
So what happens if you
burn your fake Obamacare card like FreedomWorks and the Citizens' Council for Health Freedom are telling you to do, and you end up in a conflagration with third degree burns that require lots of follow up care? They have an answer:
get insurance from Obamacare. Yes, really. And no, it doesn't make sense. Bloomberg's Christopher Flavelle:
I called (CCHF president Twila) Brase to ask what she would advise for a 22-year-old who can't afford insurance outside of the exchanges. She started by arguing that getting coverage on the exchanges doesn't guarantee access to care, and so may not be any better than going without insurance.
That claim is absurd on its face: Even if you believe that exchange-purchased insurance will offer fewer care options than other types of coverage, some insurance is leagues better than none. Forget about the penalty for not carrying insurance; what if that 22-year-old needs medical care? He can pay his doctors directly, Brase responded, or seek charity care.
Having dismissed the entire concept of insurance, Brase then tried a different argument: Thanks to the law's guarantee that nobody can be denied coverage, anyone who gets sick can simply sign up for insurance. But it isn't that simple. While you can't be denied coverage because you're sick, you still need to buy that coverage during the annual open enrollment period, as with employer-sponsored insurance. That ends March 31, 2014.
Those fake Obamacare cards need to come with a disclaimer: only burn them during open enrollment season. And only get sick then, too.
This response shows just how blatantly dishonest professional Obamacare opponents are. They know arguing that going without insurance isn't an adequate alternative because they know the reality of health care in America. Sure, hypothetically a 22-year-old can pay the doctor directly for health care. In the real world, that's an absurd argument and they know it. They're left with arguing you should make your political statement against the law because, in the end, you can take advantage of the law and get your insurance when you need to. Except the part about how you can't, most of the year. As usual, the anti-Obamacare astroturfers are selling their would-be adherents a lot of snake oil.