Today's New York Post ran an oped by Gabrielle Gray who is complaining that she cannot afford health insurance now that she chose to leave her corporate job to be a yoga teacher:
ObamaCare has hit people like me the hardest. I left a desk job at The Post to dedicate my time to teaching yoga and developing a career in health and wellness (the irony of sacrificing my health insurance for this is not lost on me).
I’m teaching on a freelance basis. My husband is also a full-time freelancer, or a “perma-lance,” if you will. Our household income puts us just barely in the lower-middle-class bracket.
So we’ve decided we’re just going to pay the Affordable Care Act’s individual-mandate penalty: 2 percent of household income or $325 per person, whichever is more (of course).
Paying this and paying cash individually for whatever services we require is still far cheaper than buying a health-insurance plan.blockquote>
New York Post oped
That works, until one of them is hit by a bus and has $200,000 worth of bills.
COBRA, she discovered is much too expensive at $1200 a month. And the freelancers union insurance was not affordable, so she looked at the ACA where she claims it is $600 or half the COBRA. No way to tell if they qualify for a subsidy but they might be just under the $62,000 cutoff in NY.
That's life. We would all like a single payer plan like other developed nations where people can be yoga teachers and have health insurance. But nowhere in this idiot's oped is there a solution except there should be no Obamacare so they don't have to pay a fine for refusing insurance. If she expects anyone who read the Post for "real" to make health insurance affordable for all she must know better, having been an employee.
How did she think she was going to pay for insurance when she quit her corporate job? This hit piece is just so whiney with no solution offered.
I tweeted to her, and a note to the studio to pass along, but thought others might want to see another attempt to lie to people about Obamacare.