Romney's Lies Can Kill You

This is for the guy who had a heart attack, lost his job and his insurance and now cannot get the care he needs to get himself back in shape in order to go back to work. Your blood pressure is through the roof. You can hardly climb the stairs to your second floor apartment without collapsing. At night, you wake up gasping for breath. Your wife is working two jobs in order to support you and your four kids. Neither job offers health insurance. Luckily, the rest of your family is healthy.

When you applied to buy private health insurance, you were laughed out the door. You are trying to hold on until 2014, when your pre-existing heart condition will not disqualify your from coverage. You are more than willing to pay, if it means staying alive and getting back in shape and eventually getting back to work so that you and your family won’t have to live in poverty.

You don’t think that it is fair that you will have to pay for insurance for your wife and your three kids, too---they aren’t sick. They don’t need insurance. They just need for you to get better, so you can get another job with good wages and benefits like the one you lost when you got sick.

Yesterday, you heard on Fox News that Romney feels your pain. He wants you to be able to buy insurance if you want it, regardless of how sick you are. He just doesn’t believe that your wife and kids need to pay for insurance they aren’t going to use. That sounds like a pretty good deal to you. You were going to vote for Obama, because Obamacare was your only hope. But now, you are thinking about Romney instead….

Here’s what will happen if Romney/Ryan do what they have already pledged to do. Obamacare will be repealed. When the year 2014 arrives, there will be no health insurance, not for you and not for your family. Because Romney wants the “market” to decide whether or not you are a good financial risk, and the market has already told you in no uncertain terms that it wants nothing to do with your bad heart. You will swallow your disappointment. In four more years you will qualify for Medicare. Maybe you can hang on until 2018. But wait! By the time you are old enough to apply for Medicare, Medicare will no longer exist. Instead, the government will give you a voucher and tell you to buy your own insurance. They will give you the same voucher they give the 65 year old woman down the street who jogs three miles every day and has perfect health. She will have no trouble getting insurance. You will get laughed out the door again. Assuming you live long enough to see your 65th birthday. Chances are, you will be dead by then. Your wife will continue to work two minimum wage jobs up until the day she has a stroke from that high blood pressure she did not know she had, because she never had the opportunity to get a medical checkup. From the hospital, she will be sent to a nursing home. Once every penny she owns has been spent, she will qualify for government assistance---Oops. Sorry. That was the old way. Under Romney/Ryan your state will be able to opt out of covering nursing home care for the disabled. But don’t worry. Your wife won’t be out on the street. The nursing home will be able to bill your kids for your wife’s long term care. After paying $250 a day to take care of their mother, the four of them will be too broke to buy health insurance for themselves.

Here’s what will happen if Obamacare is not repealed. If you are lucky, one of your wife’s employers will start offering health insurance for her and her family. Even if they don’t, since your family is financially strapped, you will receive money from the government to help you pay for health insurance . The insurer will not be able to deny you coverage because of your bad heart. The insurer will also have to provide your wife with that Pap and mammogram she has been putting off for the last four years. Your adult daughter will be able to afford birth control, and you will be able to stop worrying about what will happen if she gets pregnant. Your kids will be able to get check-ups. Most important of all, you will be able to see a cardiologist. Those blocked coronary arteries of yours can be fixed. You will get on medications that will make you feel like a new man. When you apply for jobs, employers will no longer look at you and think “That guy’s gonna drive our health insurance premiums through the roof!” Once you are back to work, you will qualify for excellent benefits. And those benefits will cover your adult daughter and you three teenagers until they are 26---out of college and with jobs of their own. When you reach retirement age, Medicare will be there for you. If the worst happens, and you require long term nursing home care, the government will pick up the tab, and your adult kids will not find themselves burdened with debt.

You are not powerless. You have a choice. Make the choice that makes sense and your future can be bright. Listen to Romney’s lies, and you will likely die prematurely.