Deamonte Driver, who lived not far from where I live, would have been looking forward to his 23rd birthday this year, a young life at the very peak of its potential - instead, his mother is looking at the tenth anniversary of his death. Because she lost Medicaid due to a paperwork mixup that resulted from the family having to move, and not having the $80 for an extraction, she could not find anyone willing to remove the abscessed tooth.
Eighty bucks. That's about what the average family spends on groceries in a week (source: www.bls.gov/...) For want of eighty bucks, the bacteria in Deamonte's mouth spread to his brain, where it killed him on February 25, 2007 despite emergency brain surgery.
That surgery, and the costs of the healthcare that started when his health declined to the point where he was rushed to a hospital, totalled to about a quarter million dollars. Since Deamonte's mom didn't have eighty bucks, she sure as hell didn't have a quarter million, so that cost went unpaid, where it was picked up partially by taxpayers and partially by the healthcare industry (and therefore by healthcare consumers).
Congress soon afterward passed a bill requiring pediatric dental coverage to be included in Medicaid, a provision which was eventually included in the Affordable Care Act. Repealing Obamacare would mean creating the same situation that killed Deamonte Driver for want of eighty bucks, instead forcing the public in general - whether they can afford health coverage or not - to help shoulder the burden of a young man's life and a quarter million dollar bill.
It goes without saying that I'd rather not be complicit in the death of a 12 year old kid. It also goes without saying that I'd rather pay part of $80 than part of $250,000. There is no situation where a straight repeal of the ACA makes sense.
Opponents of the ACA will scream about how much it costs to cover everybody. They'll scream about how it's not fair that the costs of one person's healthcare should be spread among everybody. What they won't tell you is that it costs LESS to cover everybody, BECAUSE the costs of one person's healthcare DOES get spread among everybody if they don't happen to be independently wealthy enough to pay it out of pocket. (And if you think anyone wealthy enough to pay for their healthcare out of pocket does so, and doesn't have very good health coverage, you're out of touch with reality.)
Eighty bucks is less than two hundred fifty thousand bucks. I don't care what direction you look at it from, I don't care if it's a great big 80 made out of diamond and an itty bitty 250,000 made out of balsa wood. Eighty is, was, and always shall be less than 250,000.
And a mother should never have to put flowers on her baby's grave because she didn't have $80 for the dentist.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
