Lead plaintiff in Supreme Court challenge to Obamacare goes bankrupt...

...because she couldn't pay $4,500 in medical bills.

D'oh!

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-na-healthcare-plaintiff-20120309,0,6657163.story

 

Obamacare is violating her freedoms by not allowing her to push along her health care costs to society.

BTW, I hate the term "Obamacare", unless where OK with calling Massachusetts' plan Romneycare, which I won't do, either.

 

What an odd, intellectually dishonest presentation of the story.

1) It never said she didn't have health insurance. And you can certainly rack up $4,500 in medical bills with insurance.

2) She didn't go bankrupt "because" of those bills. She had almost $60k in overall debts because of her small business failing.

No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, there's no need to have this sort of lazy, dishonest thinking become the form of debate.

 

This WSJ article from December states she doesn't have insurance.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577074351071536684.html

If Brown doesn't have insurance, she is trying to pass her costs to society, which violate's other rights if she's using the argument the individual mandate violates her rights.

 

Rick, this is the second graph...

Brown "doesn't have insurance. She doesn't want to pay for it. And she doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it," said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business.

 

Right. She should have self medicated herself if she knew she was not going to be able to pay the bills.

 

It said she doesn't have insurance now. It didn't state that she didn't have insurance when the bills were accrued.

Stitch - that argument could extend to all unpaid bills of any amount. You are talking about fundamentally rewriting the entirety of Western debt tradition and laws.

 

Isn't this more an issue of being able to get bankrupty protection for medical debts? If education debts are bankruptcy proof, why not medical debts?

 

Did it say she was a small business owner when the debts happened?

Rick, it is not sloppy reporting to have the reader assume that she has not had health insurance in recent years (when the bills occured).

 

I bet it rained on her wedding day.

 

Rick, am I reading this correctly -- you think the reporter failed to properly examine the possibility that she had insurance when she racked up the bills, even though she doesn't have insurance now and has been in the same job for years and is suing the government specifically because she doesn't want to buy insurance?

 

One can easily rack up $4,500 in medical bills WITH medical insurance when your employer's health care plan has a $5,000 in-network deductible you have to meet before it starts to pay towards your health care costs. Add a $1,500 a month premium on top of the deductible and it's easy to see how health care costs can be a killer.