Cancer patient who voted GOP in 2008 says she would be dead without Obama's health care law

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/fate-of-uninsurables-hinges-1439939.html

Fate of 'uninsurables' hinges on Supreme Court

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she'd be dead if it weren't for President Barack Obama's health care law.

Now the Florida small businesswoman is worried the Supreme Court will strike down her lifeline. Under the law, Watson and nearly 62,000 other "uninsurable" patients are getting coverage through a little-known program for people who have been turned away by insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions.

"Without it, I would have been dead on March 2," Watson said of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, known as PCIP. That's when she was hospitalized for a life-threatening respiratory infection.

It's not clear how the Supreme Court will rule on Obama's law, but Watson's case illustrates the potential impact of tying everything in the far-reaching legislation to the fate of one provision, the unprecedented requirement that most Americans carry health insurance.

[southernyankeebelle]

1. Funny I always said how fast they would become good little dem's when something serious

happen.

[Mr Dixon]

2. WOW

I wonder who she will vote for in 2012?

[gratuitous]

5. The story studiously avoids saying anything about that

It's difficult to say. In one paragraph, the woman is four-square in favor of Obamacare, but in another she's totally against employers being required to pay for insurance for their employees. There's no indication by either Ms. Watson or the account that one of the trade-offs the Republicans insisted on was that coverage for pre-existing conditions meant mandatory buying of insurance.

[Surya Gayatri]

8. Expect some cognitive dissonance when

she puts an X next to Rmoney's name on her ballot.

FOX fear-mongering and race-baiting will trump even evident self-interest.

[marions ghost]

12. Bombney of course

Obamacare is evil, y'know.

[CanonRay]

3. What do you want to bet she still votes for Rmoney?

[Hoyt]

6. Would not be surprised. Republicans think they are entitled to help, but not all those "deadbeats."

[Arkana]

4. And yet she'll rush to her polling place to vote against the Negro Commie Socialiest.

[cynatnite]

7. Sadly, this is what it took for her to get it. n/t

[Iliyah]

9. Gop base vote against

their own interest unless you are the upper class, oh well.

If the Supreme Court strike down HCR, and many upon many gopper Americans are on it right now and are benefiting from it, I'll bet the first person they blame will be Pres O because thats their logic.

[Fla Dem]

10. She's still against the ACA, except the part where she gets coverage.

"Without her PCIP coverage, Watson is convinced she would have been sent home from the emergency room after initial treatment to ease her shortness of breath.

"I'm not a candidate for any for type of indigent program, and without insurance they would not have put me in ICU," she said.

"I would have gone into cardiac arrest and probably died," she added. Emergency rooms must treat the uninsured, "but they are only required to get you stable. And then they release you and tell you to go to the health department." "

"Watson says she still disagrees with Obama's requirement that individuals have health insurance, either through an employer, a government program or by purchasing their own plan. "I approve of some of it," she said of the law, "I don't approve of the mandatory ... insurance."

Without the mandatory requirement that healthy individuals buy health care coverage, the part of the ACA that assures coverage for pre-existing conditions would not be possible. But she only wants what benefits her, and not the general public as a whole.

[Scurrilous]

11. K & R