Woman Whose Story Was Touted By Obama As An Example of the Success of ObamaCare . . . Can’t Afford Health Insurance
Jessica Sanford, the Federal Way woman who got a shout-out from President Obama last month with her fan letter for the Affordable Care Act, got a rather rude awakening last week. Turns out she doesn’t qualify for a tax credit after all.
At least that’s what the letter said that she got from the state. Now she says her dream of affordable health insurance has gone poof. She can’t afford it. She’ll have to go without. “I’m really terribly embarrassed,” she says. “It has completely turned around on me. I mean, completely.”
After Sanford signed up for ObamaCare in Washington State, she wrote a letter to Obama talking about how happy she was that she had gotten a huge subsidy. Here’s a clip on this story, featuring the Liar in Chief reading from her letter and talking about how great her story is:
Sanford’s letter, read proudly by Obama in the clip above, read:
I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed, and I haven’t had health insurance for 15 years because it is too expensive. My son has ADHD and requires regular doctor visits, and his meds alone cost $250 a month. I have had an ongoing tendinitis problem due to my line of work that I haven’t had treated. Now, finally, we get to have coverage because of the ACA for $169 a month. I was crying the other day when I signed up. So much stress lifted.
Obama beamed as he added:
Now, that is not untypical for a lot of folks like Jessica who have been struggling without health insurance. That is what the Affordable Care Act is all about.
Well, it turns out that Washington State screwed up her calculations. She is entitled, not to a $469 subsidy, but to zero. She still can’t afford health insurance. But at least she’s not worse off, right?
Wrong. She’ll be paying the penalty.
Turns out this happened to 8,000 people in Washington State — everyone who signed up for a subsidized plan in the first 23 days of the Web site’s existence was given wrong numbers. They’re all getting letters now.
This is in Washington State, remember — the place the L.A. Times said was a rousing success.
Well, at least her experience is . . . “not untypical.”
P.S. I was going to write about this this morning, to prove that I could write about political stories without reading them on Hot Air first. But that Brittany Murphy post got in the way. Lo and behold, while I was working, Allahpundit already got the story up.
Newman!
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/19/2013 @ 5:57 pmGood.
My sympathy is reserved for those people who opposed the law and voted for the Republican candidate.
aunursa (7014a8) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:00 pmThere’s a mean part of me that chuckles in delight that someone who would write a fan letter to Obama regarding the HCA would find herself to be a total dupe. On the other hand, I do feel sorry for her for being in such a tough spot. My sincere hope is that a light has gone on in her head telling here maybe — just maybe — counting on the government to take care of her isn’t such a great bet.
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:05 pmShould be “. . . telling her . . .”
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:05 pmThen there’s this:
You know what? Screw her.
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:08 pmWhen Washington State sent data to the healltcare.gov, monthly income was reported as yearly income.
Sammy Finkelman (03c829) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:10 pmRather not, JVW, she’s quite a bit dumber than my usual standards …
SPQR (768505) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:10 pmWhen Washington State sent data to the healltcare.gov, monthly income was reported as yearly income.
Well, you can’t be surprised, the whole computer and technology industry is totally alien to Washington state.
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:13 pmObama was talking about people getting charged prices like the cost of a cellphone plan.
Why shouldn’t she find $169 a month credible?
Sammy Finkelman (03c829) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:14 pmYou’ll get nothing, and pay for it.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:17 pmServes you right, lady.
They thought healthcare.gov expected to get monthly income, not annual income.
8,000 people were affected by this before they caught the problem.
Neither Obama nor anybody else asked any questions about this woman’s finances or else they would have discovered something was wrong.
Sammy Finkelman (03c829) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:18 pmIf Barack Obama, or any of his people knew, or cared enough to find out, what Obamacare actually did, they would have known that a self-employed person with a reasonably high, non-poverty level income (enough to afford $250 a month medications) could not be being charged only $169 a month for a single parent and child.
Sammy Finkelman (03c829) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:23 pmIf Barack Obama, or any of his people knew, or cared enough to find out, what Obamacare actually did. . .
Whoa there pardner, Obama’s involvement in policy ends once he reads the flowery oration from the teleprompter. He doesn’t do details. Yet Bush is of course the stupid one.
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:25 pm==Well, you can’t be surprised, the whole computer and technology industry is totally alien to Washington state.==
Very well done, JVW.
elissa (c6530a) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:28 pmThe funny part is that she’s blaming the Washington exchange, HealthPlanFinder, for screwing her over. I read in another article that she had written an email to the state exchange stating just that. She also said “you screwed up.”
So I can’t have any sympathy for her. Washington may have sent the wrong income figures to the feds, but the state of Washington doesn’t write the rules about who qualifies for a subsidy. That’s actually HHS and the IRS; I don’t believe it’s in the law itself. In any case she’s blaming the wrong people. Typical.
Another reason I have no sympathy for her is because she was moved to tears of happiness because she thought she was going to get $5628 worth of other people’s money every year.
Now she’s po’d to find out she has to pay the full cost. In other words, she’s disappointed to find out the under the plan named after the Preezy she’s such a huge fan of, she has to subsidize other people instead of the other way around.
Typical Obamabot. When she thought the rich were going to be paying for her she was happy. Now she finds out under ObamaCare she’s one of the rich rich Obama was talking about and she’s angry.
No sympathy from me. None. Enjoy the screwing you voted for, Ms. Sanford.
Steve57 (338553) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:32 pmWait until she finds out how few health care providers will take that MediCaid she signed her son up for. If she doesn’t lose that, too. Under the expansion of MediCaid children are eligible for MediCaid if their parent’s make up to 300% of the poverty level. And apparently she makes 316% of the poverty level.
If her son stays enrolled then I’m sure she’ll blame the doctors who won’t accept her son as a patient for not working essentially for free. It’s not the government’s fault that the reimbursement rates are below the cost of doing business. It’ll be the doctors fault for not digging into their own pockets and subsidizing her son’s health care.
After all, Obama told her health care is a right. That means someone has to provide it, if she has a right to their labor.
Steve57 (338553) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:39 pmAfter all, Obama told her health care is a right. That means someone has to provide it, if she has a right to their labor.
Steve57, I’m sure all those doctors in lab coats who showed up for the ObamaCare rallies will be happy to pick up the slack.
JVW (709bc7) — 11/19/2013 @ 6:45 pmHow I feel about Ms. Sanford not being able to afford an ObamaCare plan because she makes enough money to be forced to subsidize other people’s health insurance, instead of getting other people’s money to pay for her insurance like she voted for.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=w2k1vp&s=5#.Uow5C-KYaQl
Steve57 (338553) — 11/19/2013 @ 8:28 pmThe could have dealt with the preexisting condition problem by subsidizing the extra cost directly. But they didn’t want to budget that, so they simply mandated that plans must ignore these factors. Guess what happens? Everyone’s costs go up so that it all averages out. If the insurance co expects every last sick person to sign up, they have to figure out a way to keep the price down so that well people sign up to. They did that by cutting their provider list to the lowest of the low-cost providers.
Upshot is that everyone in the individual marketplace is forced into what amounts to the Medicaid network except they have to pay double what they did last year. I guess if you have cancer to treat this is better than nothing, but not much better and everyone else is getting the shaft.
And all they had to do was KEEP IT SIMPLE and directly subsidize high-risk policies. But no. Lying, tricks and making someone else pay are what politicians do.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 11/19/2013 @ 8:49 pmAnd here’s the thing about Ms Sanford:
If someone else had her exact story, but she herself was getting the subsidy she thought she was getting, she’d be rabidly in support of Obamacare and call that other Ms Sanford an ingrate, or worse.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 11/19/2013 @ 8:53 pmi agree with this sentiment 110%.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 11/19/2013 @ 11:20 pmHere’s one more HotAir link, then. Wendy Davis has gone for the Heather Locklear look in hair, now. Oh, and one more thing, SCOTUS upheld the Fifth Circuit’s reversal of the abortion law stay. http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/19/supreme-court-refuses-to-block-new-texas-restrictions-on-abortion/
nk (dbc370) — 11/20/2013 @ 5:44 amI also love how she “doesn’t make a lot of money” and yet makes just under 50K.
Patrick H (f854d7) — 11/20/2013 @ 10:21 amComment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 11/19/2013 @ 8:49 pm
And all they had to do was KEEP IT SIMPLE and directly subsidize high-risk policies. But no. Lying, tricks and making someone else pay are what politicians do
That would have made it obvious that some people were getting a benfit at other people’s expense because of their health.
That would mean that all people were not equal.
(Unequal benefits because of income is OK with them, but because of health would makes some people feel inferior, and maybe not even willingh to accept help. But this way they can keep their pride. That must have been the thinking.)
Calling it insurance makes everybody equal.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 11/20/2013 @ 11:43 amIf I recall correctly, all the ones who could be identified turned out not to be doctors.
Milhouse (b95258) — 11/20/2013 @ 3:00 pmIn NYC that’s not a lot of money; it’s barely enough to get by on.
Milhouse (b95258) — 11/20/2013 @ 3:03 pmMedian household income for Olympia, WA was $50,646 in 2009. Those are the latest figures I could find. To be fair the median family income was just north of $70k, but then a lot of households contain only singles or a single person with income. Still she should be able to do more than just get by on $50k.
http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Olympia-Washington.html
Steve57 (338553) — 11/20/2013 @ 3:23 pm