SocraticGadfly: I will praise #Obamacare for #GohmertPyle being even more teh stupidz

January 21, 2014

I will praise #Obamacare for #GohmertPyle being even more teh stupidz

Seriously, if Louie Gohmert has hit a new stupidity low so low that, at the age of 60, he's cancelling his health insurance because he claims Obamacare made it too expensive, bring it on!

(Oh, and there's still oil in parts of his district. Maybe we can see a trifecta of his stupidity, his anger at Obamacare and his general wingnut opposition to real government, including real regulations. Let's say, something like a bad frack job to bubble some methane into his water or something.)

Hete's the details:
“Other people are going to see what I did when I looked into health insurance for my wife and me: that the deductible rate, it doubled, about $3,000 to $6,000, and our policy was going to go from about $300 to about $1,500 a month,” he said during a recent radio interview with Trey Graham, a pastor at First Melissa Baptist Church in Collin County. “I actually don’t have insurance right now, so thank you very much, Obamacare.”

Gohmert’s salary as a member of Congress is $174,000 a year. And his calculations ignore the hefty employer subsidy for which he is eligible — almost $950 per month. He says he will pay the tax that takes effect this year for those without insurance — 1 percent of his annual income.

Health care experts say Gohmert is taking a big risk. He’s 60. His wife, Kathy Gohmert, is 59. At that stage of life, medical expenses are common and unpredictable.

“By not obtaining insurance, you are just rolling the dice, gambling that you are not going to get sick or going to get hit by a car,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “Most financial advisers and most independent experts would say it’s a wise move to obtain insurance and basically a no-brainer if you have an employer who is willing to kick in about 70 percent of the cost of your premium.”

That’s the case for Gohmert.

But for months, he’s said he would rather give up his government-supplied insurance than accept any government subsidy. If he did take the subsidy available to federal lawmakers and their aides, he would probably pay a monthly premium of about $600 — far less than the figure he cited on Graham’s show, which aired Sunday.
Reality?

He, and other Congresscritters of both parties, have long been in the same insurance pool as their staffers, who are generally younger and healthier. So, that sucking at the teat is wrong.

Don't cry for Gohmert Pyle, though, whether you're Evita or anybody else. He still gets free outpatient care at Walter Reed and other perks.

And, per what the health care experts say? In Gohmert's case, it's stupider yet because he currently has a negative net worth.

Oh, well, if he gets sick enough, he can learn about real life. He can maybe learn about medical-cost induced bankruptcy, and find out why, for all its imperfections, many red-state folks, including in his district, like Obamacare more than the previous options.

That would be kind of funny, in a schadenfreude way: Louie Gohmert, medically bankrupt. He's already morally and intellectually bankrupt. If something like this happened the way I spell out, we'd have three or four petards hoisting at the same time, wouldn't we?

Of course, some of his supporters will start raising funds for him to buy a new insurance policy if this is real action by him, and not just posturing. And, he will be insured. Stupidity, no more than any other pre-existing condition, cannot bar you from insurance coverage.

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