This Pompous Ass Attacked the ACA While Knowing Little About It

by Mark Bear

I wish people – specifically lawmakers – like Rick Santorum, would just shut his pie hole when he makes stupid comments like this. I have a pre-existing condition, and it is called Systemic Lupus. So, why should I be discriminated against, and why should I be labeled a “scammer” for making an insurance company cover me?

Am I truly a scammer when I had a myocardial infarction at the young age of thirty-three? Am I truly a scammer when being labeled terminally ill due to complications just three months after that heart attack? What about being a scammer when my blood doesn’t clot correctly, a condition which affects a large swath of our population? What about when I had a pulmonary emboli at the age of thirty-six? Does that qualify me as a scammer? How about having a Greenfield filter placed in my Aorta to prevent those pesky blood clots from traveling north to my brain or my heart, only to have it fail miserably?

Does my stroke qualify as being a scam, whereupon I needed to re-learn language and increase my strength through rehabilitation, and despite that rehabilitation I still have not fully recovered all of that strength on my left side? Would that be what Rick Santorum considers a scam?

See that is the beauty of engaging in stereotypes like this! One can just make an over-generalization and it need not even apply to what one applies it to. And what about the millions of other people out there who do not have insurance, or worse had it, lost it due to a job loss, and now are threatened with facing the very real possibility of no insurer picking him or her – myself included – up due to a pre-existing condition?

Make no mistake: If the GOP does in fact repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without a replacement, it WILL affect folks just like me, and millions of others, meaning the insurer will be under no obligation to pick me up as a client, or worse charge me such an exuberant amount that I will in effect be shut out of purchasing any insurance.

The entire reason the ACA is supposed to work is argued on several fronts. First, insurance companies have taken literally no risk whatsoever and have cherry picked those who are the best in health profiles. But what about the people who are sick? Like me? Well, the ACA changed all of that. Now, under the current law, people cannot be discriminated from obtaining coverage due to their past medical condition.

Folks, I am not saying I am entitled here, but seriously? Systemic Lupus has serious complications which I have lived with for my entire life since being diagnosed at age thirty-three. At that time, I was told I was terminally ill due to my complications. And I have serious complications but by grace I live. However, when first diagnosed, I spent nearly one-half of each year for the first five years IN the hospital versus being out. I can specifically recall one nurse telling me when I was leaving “Against Medical Advice,” that my insurer would not pay my claim,” to which I replied, “trust me, the insurer will pay the claim because they will be grateful I had enough sense to walk out of here before you kill me.” Guess what folks: The insurer did in fact, pay the claim!

Another reason the law is supposed to work – and as much as people hate it – is due to the individual mandate. If insurance companies simply take only the best health profiles, why not make those people sign on to getting insurance – since if they get sick they will be taxing the system anyhow by either going to the Emergency Room and having a huge bill which may or may not get paid – and mitigate the insurance company’s risk? It all seems logical to me, but then again; I am a pragmatist, who has empathy for others.

However, if you are a rugged individualist like most conservatives who feel YOU alone are entitled to resources and could care less about the others in your world, well then it doesn’t make much sense, does it? It is called empathy folks, not sympathy, which is something the former Senator apparently lacks!

Do you want to know the irony in all this? Mr Santorum – claims he is a Christian. Is he? Because the Jesus I learned about in the Bible does not discriminate and further HE healed people. What’s Rick’s problem? I think we all deserve an answer to that question since he persists in cramming his religious beliefs down everyone else’s throat through legislative means, right?
Finally, you know what I find more ironic? It is folks like Santorum who would yell, moan, groan, scream, and cry out on Fox News, demanding to be covered if it were THEIR OWN FAMILY in the conundrum. Remember when Rick Santorum had the audacity to call our former President a pompous arrogant jerk? Touche Rick. Right back at ya!

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