As Some Got Free Health Care, Gwen Got Squeezed: An Obamacare Dilemma

By ABBY GOODNOUGH | FEB. 19, 2018

Gwen Hurd got the letter just before her shift at the outlet mall. Her health insurance company informed her that coverage for her family of three, purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would cost almost 60 percent more this year — $1,200 a month.

She and her husband, a contractor, found a less expensive plan, but at $928 a month, it meant giving up date nights and saving for their future. Worse, the new policy required them to spend more than $6,000 per person before it covered much of anything. 

“It seems to me that people who earn nothing and contribute nothing get everything for free,” said Ms. Hurd, 30. “And the people who work hard and struggle for every penny barely end up surviving.” . . .

Many Republican states plan to start requiring many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or take job-training classes. Along the same theme, Mr. Trump’s new budget proposal would make it harder for the so-called “able-bodied” poor who don’t work to receive food stamps and public housing.

Such proposals reflect a “very American” view — that only those who are severely disabled or struck by tragedy deserve government assistance, and that anyone else who gets it is shirking, said Mark Rank, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Our social safety net is, in general, the weakest of any of the Western industrialized countries because we have these kinds of views,” Mr. Rank said. . .

Read the entire article at the NY Times . . . https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/health/obamacare-premiums-medicaid.html

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