Joshua Pittman of Montgomery, Alabama is now signed up for some nice, juicy ObamaCare. He’s 31, self-employed, and a self-described libertarian who voted for Ron Paul in 2012.
Though he initially supported repealing the law, Pittman became curious about Obamacare in the days and weeks before it launched. For years, he had gone uninsured, thinking he’d be able to “get over anything with a bandaid and a six pack of beer.” But a lead poisoning incident earlier this year shook his confidence and bank account, lea[v]ing him with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. “I was a healthy person and it really depleted me financially, so it made me look at things in a different way than I would before. I understood the importance of people being insured.”
Not to be critical of Mr. Pittman, but it seems to be a common feature among conservative people that they need to experience certain things in a very personal way before they can really understand the merits of progressive efforts to improve people’s lives. In Mr. Pittman’s case, going uninsured bit him in the ass and cost him tens of thousands of dollars. He also came down, it appears, with something that has been traditionally considered a pre-existing condition.
Asked what he liked about Obamacare, Pittman highlighted its prohibition against denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, noting that he wouldn’t be able to find coverage without it, and said that the policies offered in the marketplace seemed more affordable and comprehensive than those available to him on the individual market. “You may pay $18 a month [for a cheaper plan] and you’re missing level of coverage. It’s not as easy as you’re going to pay this much a month,” he says.
Finally, he has the self-awareness to understand that being a free rider on the health care system is not a socially responsible thing to do and that accepting a subsidy for health care doesn’t make it a free ride.
“I’ve seen first hand people hitting up the emergency room for free health care and then putting a burden on [everyone else] and that’s not something I would want to do, I want to take personal responsibility … By no means am I trying to take a government handout…it’s not a free handout, you’re paying for this health care, but it’s making it more accessible to more people.”
Now that Mr. Pittman has had this series of revelations, I wonder what he thinks about Ron Paul’s answer to Wolf Blitzer’s question about whether we should let a 30 year old man who chooses to go without medical insurance die rather than give him the urgent care he needs.
I also wonder what Mr. Pittman thinks about the fact that Ron Paul supporters cheered the idea of letting that hypothetical man die. After all, he was 30 years old and choosing to go without medical insurance last year. He came down with a serious medical condition. What if he hadn’t been able to incur tens of thousands of dollars of bills? And how can those folks insist so strongly that people take personal responsibility for getting health insurance and then turn around and call the personal mandate some form of tyranny?
When confronted with reality, don’t you think that Mr. Pittman would find the arguments of Ron Paul and his supporters to be callous, inconsistent, and even illogical?
Maybe this hasn’t fully sunken in, yet, and maybe it never will. But there’s a decent chance that Mr. Pittman will be less inclined to buy the easy, pat answers provided by libertarians in the future. If he doesn’t already know better, he should.
