Since the Supreme Court challenge of the ACA has thrust healthcare debate into the spotlight, I am once again forced to grimace and gnash my teeth as panels of well-compensated pundits and politicians ruminate about the mandate and the problem of "free loaders" on the healthcare system.
No other term shows how completely out of touch the people shaping opinion and laws are about the reality of healthcare on the ground for the average American.
The term "free-loader" is synonymous with a moocher, someone who enjoys using someone elses resources while retaining their own - like your brother-in-law who has never once picked up the tab at a restaurant, the co-worker who carpools with you and has never kicked in for gas, etc. These people might be accurately described as free-loaders. The idea that this same term can be applied to people who access healthcare services when they have no insurance themselves is ludicrous.
The people pushing the "Free Loader" image would have us picture this subset of our citizens as walking around going "Oh, goody, I'm gaming the system. I'm not paying for healthcare and everyone else is going to pay my tab. Nyah, nyah, jokes on them, the chumps!".
That doesn't square with what I know to be the truth -millions and millions of Americans have no healthcare insurance even though they desire to have it desperately. It's the first thing they think about in the morning and the last thing they think about at night. That they have no healthcare and can fall in a financial abyss from which they can never recover is their own personal black cloud that shadows their every day.
When and if one of these folks gets sick or has an accident, what do they do? They visit an emergency room or an urgent care and create a financial obligation they know in advance that they have little hope of repaying. They still need food, they still need a roof over their head, they still need their car and the expensive gas it requires to retain their crappy job with no benefits. A $2000 dollar emergency room visit will result in debt collection efforts and bankruptcy.
I once read an article that said the US does have a group of "Super Consumers" of emergency room and clinic care - people without insurance who are desperately and chronically ill and return again and again. Believe it or not, as horrible as it is to be poor and sick, or unemployed and sick, they would still like to enjoy every day of breathing that they can get. Goddam Freeloaders!! The honorable thing would be for them to slink off and die quietly without sucking up our healthcare resources. They have proven themselves to be inherently unworthy since they are uninsured, have they not? In our Scrooge-like, miserly system, they are the surplus population. They are fungible. Their loss is our gain.
What the pundits and the a-holes on TV discussing "free-loaders" are apparently unaware of, is that free-loaders of healthcare free load because THEY HAVE NO OTHER OPTION. Healthcare insurance in this country for people who do not have it through their employer and who do not qualify for public programs like Medicaid and Medicare, is simply beyond their economic reach. Even the high risk pools that were created for people with pre-existing conditions are too expensive for many.
Can there really be people in America who cannot afford $300, $400, $600, $800 and more a month for healthcare? To anyone asking that question - Yes, you idiots, there are people like this, and their numbers are legion! It is in the tens of millions! There is a gigantic group of people who are living day to day, paycheck to paycheck, and health insurance might as well be a a slice of green cheese from the moon, their chances of buying it are about the same.
Now, the sad thing is that the ACA as nice as it is to have even one step on the path to providing affordable healthcare doesn't do all that much to solve the problem of the "free-loaders". People living on the edge financially will still not be able to pay up to 8% of their incomes in premiums and to additionally pay the deductibles and out-of-pockets that will be retained under the ACA.
Healthcare costs continue to spiral. Unemployment remains an issue. Wage degradation continues. One of the few growth industries in the US is the manufacturing of healthcare Free Loaders, or as I prefer to call them, the Uninsured.