Friday, April 24, 2015

I've never sued anyone, but I'm considering it...

I'm wondering about healthcare. I live in Texas, where former Gov. Perry refused to expand Medicaid. What that did was leave an enormous group of people--including my family--in a position where we make too much money for Medicaid, but not enough to get a subsidy for our insurance. Now, curse me if you like, call me lazy, tell me to get a better job or whatever, but we do fine. We eat great food, have enough cars to go around and so forth. We don't go out to dinner, don't buy many clothes, and our cars are 8-16 years old. So we do okay. But when I tried to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, we fell between "too much for Medicaid" and "Not enough for subsidies", what I've called The Rick Perry Donut-Hole. And there are several million people in it in Texas right now. To get good insurance--which means nearly zero deductible--I'd have to pay around $18,000 a year for the five people on my income tax return. If I earned another $8,000 I would qualify for a subsidy and pay about $300 a month, or $3600 a year for the same insurance. If I earned $8000 less, we'd all qualify for Medicaid. As it is, we are in that damned Perry Donut-Hole.
      So the question is this: Since Rick Perry, and our current Governor Greg Abbott have left the several million of us without the financial ability to buy insurance by not expanding Medicaid, could we collectively sue the state of Texas for imperiling our health? Yes, we have emergency rooms to use--and yes, I get checked and worked on in Peru when I'm there a couple of times a year--but Perry and now Abbott have left millions of us in a position where we cannot get screenings and checkups because they are unaffordable. That imperils us, because things like cancer are much more treatable if discovered early rather than in late stages.
     Maybe I'm nuts. But I'm already paying taxes for our emergency rooms and everything else, so why am I cut out of medical insurance, or better, why was Perry and why is Abbott allowed to put my family's health in a bad position when there was another alternative that could have easily been accessed--just accepting the federal dollars we already pay in to get our share of the subsidies coming out?
    Sounds like a darned good lawsuit if there's a good lawyer out there.

2 comments:

Joshua Duncan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joshua Duncan said...

You're in quite the predicament there. It's difficult to tell just exactly where your insurance should place when they're not being elaborate about it. You're caught somewhere in between the middle, and it's a bit unfair that you can't avail Medicaid, yet you can't get subsidy for your insurance either. It kinda makes you wonder, just how much do they really want you to earn. At any rate, I do hope you've found a solution for that issue, Peter. Keep us posted for updates. All the best to you!

Joshua Duncan @ Focus Insurance