Why Romney's Lying About the Availability of Health Care

I often disagree with much of what Nicholas Kristof writes, but in today's New York Times he hits a home run as he looks at the continuing tragedy of those who find themselves without health care insurance either through no fault of their own or through carelessness and/or a false sense of immortality.  Mitt Romney has pledged to undo the Affordale Health Care Act ("AHA") - derisively called "Obamacare" by the far right and Republicans - which among other things seeks to increase the number of Americans.  In Romney's mind, just as 47% of Americans are moochers and parasites, so too are millions of Americans disposable.  Simply unworthy or unimportant trash to be discarded.  Kristof begins his column by looking at the unfortunate situation of a friend and then looks at what Romney and the GOP would do to millions of citizens.  Here are column excerpts:

Yet for all his innate prudence, Scott now, at age 52, is suffering from Stage 4 prostate cancer, in part because he didn’t have health insurance. President Obama’s health care reform came just a bit too late to help Scott, but it will protect others like him — unless Mitt Romney repeals it. 

If you favor gutting “Obamacare,” please listen to Scott’s story. He is willing to recount his embarrassing tale in part so that readers can learn from it.   I’ll let Scott take over the narrative:

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It all started in December 2003 when I quit my job as a pension consultant in a fit of midlife crisis. For the next year I did little besides read books I’d always wanted to read and play poker in the local card rooms.

I didn’t buy health insurance because I knew it would be really expensive in the individual policy market, because many of the people in this market are high risk. I would have bought insurance if there had been any kind of fair-risk pooling. In 2005 I started working seasonally for H&R Block doing tax returns.

As seasonal work it of course doesn’t provide health benefits, but then lots of full-time jobs don’t either. I knew I was taking a big risk without insurance, but I was foolish.

In 2011 I began having greater difficulty peeing. I didn’t go see the doctor because that would have been several hundred dollars out of pocket — just enough disincentive to get me to make a bad decision.

A normal P.S.A. test for prostate cancer is below 4, and mine was 1,100. They also did a CT scan, which turned up possible signs of cancerous bone lesions. Prostate cancer likes to spread to bones.

Let’s just stipulate up front that Scott blew it. Other people are sometimes too poor to buy health insurance or unschooled about the risks. Scott had no excuse. He could have afforded insurance 

He’s the first to admit that he screwed up catastrophically and may die as a result. .  .  .  .  Yet remember also that while Scott was foolish, mostly he was unlucky. He is a bachelor, so he didn’t have a spouse whose insurance he could fall back on in his midlife crisis. In any case, we all take risks, and usually we get away with them. Scott is a usually prudent guy who took a chance, and then everything went wrong. 

The Mitt Romney philosophy, as I understand it, is that this is a tragic but necessary byproduct of requiring Americans to take personal responsibility for their lives. They need to understand that mistakes have consequences. That’s why Romney would repeal Obamacare and leave people like Scott to pay the price for their irresponsibility. 

To me, that seems ineffably harsh. We all make mistakes, and a humane government tries to compensate for our misjudgments. That’s why highways have guardrails, why drivers must wear seat belts, why police officers pull over speeders, why we have fire codes. In other modern countries, Scott would have been insured, and his cancer would have been much more likely to be detected in time for effective treatment. Is that a nanny state? No, it’s a civilized one. 

President Obama’s care plan addresses this problem inelegantly, by forcing people like Scott to buy insurance beginning in 2014. Some will grumble about the “mandate” and the insurance cost, but it will save lives. 

Already, Obamacare is slowly reducing the number of people without health insurance, as young adults can now stay on their parents’ plans. But the Census Bureau reported last month that 48.6 million Americans are still uninsured — a travesty in a wealthy country. The Urban Institute calculated in 2008 that some 27,000 Americans between the ages of 25 and 65 die prematurely each year because they don’t have health insurance. Another estimate is even higher. 

You want to put a face on those numbers? Look at Scott’s picture. One American like him dies every 20 minutes for lack of health insurance.

Romney's statement that no one goes without health care is a lie.  And it costs lives literally daily.  It is a scandal that the USA does not provide health care coverage like every other modern industrialized nation.  It's an even bigger scandal that those seeking to repeal AHA  are the same ones who claim to be godly Christians even as they utterly ignore the Gospel message of Christ.  The hypocrisy of it all in mind numbing.