"Please Judge, I Am an Orphan"

I've used this joke hundred times to illustrate pure chutzpah: A guy murders both of his parents and then pleads for leniency because he is an orphan.

And that's kind of what we have with fulltime Republican moron Luis Lang in South Carolina, who couldn't be bothered to get Obamacare coverage when it was available (i.e., within the three-month open enrollment period) because it was "socialized medicine" and he prided himself on being able to pay his own medical bills.

Yeah, and as the Bible has it, "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall." (Yes, that's the real quote, not the oft-quoted and pithier but erroneous, "Pride goeth before a fall.")

Now he's sick with diabetes-related blindness issues and is whining because he doesn't have coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The Daily Kos has the whole story, and it's not a pretty one:

All seemed good until this February when a series of headaches led him to the doctor. Tests revealed that Lang had suffered a series of mini-strokes tied to diabetes. (It's not clear to me from the piece whether Lang knew he had diabetes earlier or whether that was the diabetes diagnosis as well.) He also has a partially detached retina and eye bleeding tied to his diabetes. The initial medical care for the mini-strokes ran to almost $10,000 and burned through his savings. And now he can't work because of his eye issue and can't afford the surgery that would save his eyesight and also allowing him to continue working.
I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but this is exactly why people buy insurance in the first place. The whole concept is that you shell out several hundred dollars per month when you're not sick or injured so that you'll have your medical bills covered in the event that you become sick/injured. He made a gamble that he'd never become so sick/injured badly enough that he wouldn't be able to afford 100% of the cost...and it finally caught up with him.

In fact, this is exactly the hypothetical scenario which Ron Paul was asked about during one of the GOP primary debates back in 2012 (the infamous "Let Him Die!!" moment).

Now the dickhead has the gall to blame Obama and the Democrats because he made some stupid -- no some idiotic -- choices and finds himself holding the shitty end of the stick.

Instead of blaming the real culprits, the Republicans in South Carolina who "don't want none o' that god damned soshulazzed med'cin", he's flailing out at the very people who, had their advice been followed, would have alleviated his situation.

Because, again, if the ACA hadn't been passed, their situation would be...well, exactly the same as it is now.
In fact, it would be worse because without the ACA, even if his income does pick back up again, pre-ACA insurance companies would still refuse to touch him with a 10-foot pole, whereas under the ACA he at least has a shot at getting covered if he can stick it out for another 8 months.
This, of course, leads to the most jaw-droppingly honest look at the conservative mindset I've seen in months:
 “(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,” Mary Lang said last week. “We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.”
Astonishing.
"Screw you, everyone else!! We spent years helping enact policies which shaft the poor, and even deliberately blew off taking steps to help ourselves if we ever fell on hard times, but now that we need help, everyone else should get the hell out of the way and move us to the front of the line."

So much for the Party of Personal Responsibility. I guess we couldn't really expect anything else.

Except this: He's started an illiterately-written GoFundMe page (no, I won't link to it, thank you) begging for money to help with the medical bills. And it is likely that many bleeding-heart liberals will donate to it, because by and large we don't want even assholes like this to suffer.

And the final kicker will be when he thanks all of his Republican friends for their donations that show up Obamacare for the nightmare that it is.

You can fix ignorant, but you can't fix stupid. At this point I'm leaning towards the Tea Party "Let Him Die" Solution. I know that sounds cold and hard-hearted, but come on...

Okay, not really. Even assholes deserve to live. Even Republican assholes.

Well, That Backfired

It's clear that Washington State's own Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Blithering Idiot), like most Republicans, lives in a different reality, on a whole other planet.

If you recall, she was the "official" Republican Party anti-Obama ranter after his 2014 State of the Union. During her rebuttal, she brought up one "constituent" of hers, someone she called "Bette from Spokane" who had an enraging tale of woe regarding the Affordable Care Act.

According to this Wonkette story, "Bette from Spokane"

... was kicked off her wonderful health insurance and would have to spend $700 more a month for a new plan under the ACA. Except none of that turned out to be true: Bette’s old “affordable” plan only covered catastrophic care, with a $10,000 annual deductible — though it did include four (4) free office visits a year. And the replacement plan she complained about to McMorris Rodgers was one of the priciest plans offered by her insurer when it canceled her junk insurance — Bette didn’t even bother looking on “that Obama website at all,” because it was communist, although she’d have found several options providing better coverage at the same price as her junk plan.

No one really knows what happened to "Bette from Spokane" -- or if she was even a real person -- but that didn't stop Little Cathy from her vituperative rage against Obamacare. Even though that same trick didn't work for Ted Cruz a year ago, Little Cathy forged ahead and asked her many Facebook followers to help her expose the evil that is Obamacare:

Whether it’s turned your tax filing into a nightmare, you’re facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer has reduced your work hours, I want to hear about it.
Please share your story with me so that I can better understand the challenges you’re facing: http://mcmorris.house.gov/your-story/

And share they did! People flooded her Facebook page with "stories of how they’d finally gotten insurance after being denied due to pre-existing conditions, or how their previous private plans covered practically nothing, or how they were healthcare workers who were seeing a lot of new patients who otherwise might have gone to the ER for unaffordable care. Oops."

Actual Facebook screen captures show these responses, too numerous to adequately quote here. Take a look for yourself.

You gotta wonder about the sanity of the Republican Party in general. Is Obamacare perfect? No, but it's the best we've got right now, until we can put Medicare for All into effect.

And that's why it's important to elect Democrats next year. Send the Republican Party where it belongs, into the dustbin of history.

And before you ask, yes that means voting for Hillary Clinton. If we have to. Just to keep another Bush out of the White House...