It’s called sticker shock. And Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura, residents of northern California’s Bay Area, have a bad case of it.
The San Jose Mercury News writes that Vinson and Waschura “are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.”
Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
“I was laughing at Boehner,” Waschura told reporters, “until the mail came today.” He went on to elaborate:
I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.
Apparently, Waschura hadn’t paid as much attention to Barack Obama’s fairness doctrine as he may of thought. If he had, he might have been aware of the president’s belief in “income that wealthy people don’t need” — monies that the government can rightly confiscate and redistribute to the less fortunate among us. And Waschura, whose adjusted gross income is greater than four times the federal poverty level, certainly meets Obama’s definition of wealthy.
Ditto for Vinson, who concluded:
Of course, I want people to have health care. I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.
