The least of the fallout from a Supreme Court decision striking down Obamacare health insurance subsidies in states that are using the federal exchange will be political, though that's the dimension that seems to get the most ink from the traditional media. But there are individual lives at stake, and NPR
looks at three out of the roughly 186,000 people who could be losing insurance in Louisana.
Carlton Scott is 63. Sitting at the kitchen table of his home in Prairieville, La., near Baton Rouge, Scott tells me he worked at a chemical plant for 30 years before he retired. Last fall his company let him know it was scaling back his retirement benefits.
Those benefits he lost included his health insurance, a huge blow for him. But now he pays $266.99 a month for his insurance, while he waits until he's eligible for Medicare. As for the Supreme Court which might decide to take his insurance away? "They all got insurance, too," he says. "I guarantee you that. They all got insurance."
His isn't the only story. There's 31-year-old LaTasha Perry, a single mom who works full time and can only afford insurance because of Obamacare. She can't afford the health insurance provided by her employer, ironically a community health center, and thus qualified for a subsidy, so she only pays $13 a month. She could become an uninsured healthcare worker, which sounds absolutely surreal, but is anything but.
Finally, there's Charles Dalton who retired from being a paramedic at 64 and who has since become disabled. He's holding out for Medicare, and his Obamacare subsidy is his lifeline. "I'm disabled," Dalton says. "But I would be totally incapacitated without seeing this doctor."
"You're not asking for a handout," Dalton says. "But if you get a helping hand, the last thing you need is for it to be snatched out from under you."
That's a remote concern for the five members of the Supreme Court who have a deep ideological hatred for this law. But it's everything to many of the millions whose health insurance, family budgets, and perhaps lives hang in the balance.