The latest and most pernicious obstructionist tactic being used by Republicans to try to block Obamacare – other than threatening a government shutdown, defaulting on the debt Congress itself has run up and refusing to expand Medicaid – is to encourage young, healthy people to pay the individual mandate penalty and stay away from the health insurance exchanges.

You know, because young people never need insurance or never grow old. And if above all odds you do get sick or hurt and missed the open enrollment to buy insurance on your state’s exchange, do as one FreedomWorks staffer suggested to get your medical bills paid, “... you should go to your neighbors and church. It’s the American way of doing charity.”

Joshua Holland over at Moyers & Company said, “The idea is that if young, healthy people can be convinced to stay away from the exchanges, premiums will skyrocket for everyone else and the whole scheme will come crashing to the ground.” 

FreedomWorks goes so far as to compare the individual mandate to being as unfair as a military draft. Right, because it’s fairer to have 1 percent of the population fight our wars for the other 99 percent.

Can you see how desperate some of the extremists have become to stop others from receiving affordable health care? To them, it’s preferable to maintain the status quo of using the emergency room for health care, one of the most inefficient and expensive ways ever developed for delivering health care. Unless it is an actual emergency, this status quo is one of the reasons that 17.9 percent of GDP or $8,362 per person is spent on health in the United States.

But, if you do decide to forego the subsidized insurance and pay the fine, and, God forbid, get hurt or become ill, the emergency room and your neighbors and church will be right there for you. 

—Patrick T. McGann

Moab