Obamacare: Unfair to the young middle class, punished enough already

"For 'tis the sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petar..."

Today's chapter in the book of Obamacare comes from a young free-lance writer in California who is discovering that a) someone has to pay for free healthcare and b) apparently, he's someone.

Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.

Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

My reaction?



You know, people tried to tell you this, but you didn't want to listen. No, you thought, only greedy people would be opposed to this. And besides, you aren't rich - it's not going to impact you. Someone else is going to pay for it!

And I'm reminded, as has happened so many times during this administration, of Atlas Shrugged. This time, the plan at the 20th Century Motor Factory...

There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about all his ingeriors who'd rush to drain him just as he hped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted - that was the the truth of it - but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Apparently, Matthew Fleischer's love for the common good last just until it started to cost him personally.