Ezra Klein offers up one of the simplest, smartest pieces about the whys and impact of opposing "Obamacare."
The thing to remember is that the problem it's meant to solve — killer health costs — ain't going away and will only get worse. Tonight, I'm paying a bill for a recent time when my mother had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. The bill just for the ambulance is $1,373.00. That's just to get her to the hospital. Once inside, it ran more than $22,000 just for the Emergency Room and about that much more for a two-day hospital stay. With her insurance, the $1,373.00 goes down to fifty bucks and the two $22,000+ bills go to near-zero.
What do uninsured people do? Well, they don't pay that kind of money. They either don't receive services (i.e., probably die) or they go to Emergency Rooms for free health care…and at some point in there, they may wipe out whatever savings they had and become very, very poor and/or declare bankruptcy. And while it doesn't cost "us" $50,000 of actual money to give an uninsured person the kind of treatment my mother received, it does cost something and the uninsured people ain't paying it. I wonder if "Obamacare" would become more enticing to the public if they saw running figures on how much it's costing us in tax dollars and higher medical costs to keep doing it the way we're doing it.