Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Obamacare Killed My Sister
My sister Julie had health insurance that was deemed unsuitable by Darth Obama. Now she is dead. We will bury her on Wednesday. My brother wrote a piece explaining the sad tale here:
Julie, her husband, and four children were covered by a medical plan they liked, and had been promised they could keep by President Obama. But like so many others in this country, her family’s private health care policy was cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act. So my sister and her family struggled through the expensive and incompetently designed Obamacare website to find a new policy. Unfortunately, while they waited for their new Obama-approved healthcare plan to finally kick in, my little sister fell ill. She couldn’t keep down solid food. She should have gone to a doctor. But she toughed it out, as many people do, until her new coverage would kick in on February 2. She and her husband didn’t have a lot of money, so she didn’t want to incur what she thought were avoidable medical expenses.
But she didn’t make it. It turns out that, unbeknownst to her, she wasn’t suffering from an upset stomach or food poisoning, but a badly blocked gall bladder that had become highly infected. Her body went into septic shock just two days before her Obamacare policy would have kicked in. Her kidneys shut down. She went to the emergency room where, after heroic efforts, a marvelous medical team managed to stabilize her condition. I saw Julie that day for several hours. She could not move, or speak, but a tear trickled down her check when she saw the eldest daughter of her four children. After I left, hoping for the best, I learned the next day that her gentle heart stopped beating around 4:00 a.m.
So, while the White House sends out talking points to the talking heads who proclaim Americans will be better off because Obamacare forced them off of inadequate health care plans, my family knows better.
Our family is in shock that an otherwise healthy 54-year-old woman is now gone. I guess she was just one of the proles sacrificed for the greater good of the state.
Published in General
I am so sorry for your loss. To think Obamacare could already be killing people. Everyone involved in making this legislation is morally responsible for her death.
I am sorry for your loss.
I too am sorry for your loss. I’m glad you took the time to tell us, because we care and it makes a difference to us. I don’t think anybody in the other Media want to hear about it. Dark days ahead.
This is such a tragedy, made worse by how easily preventable and unnecessary it was. Your sister is a victim of total incompetence and indifference. Our thoughts prayers are with you and your family.
Dear Melanie, I am so sorry for your loss and for your family’s loss. Losing a sibling is a different and difficult thing and my prayers are with each of you.
Melanie: We grieve with you over the great loss of your sister, and share your anger that the Obama regime values individual lives so little.
For others reading these comments, we hasten to remind conservatives that we are, individually, responsible to operate our affairs in such a way as to not get caught in the government machine. Health insurance, like any other promissory contract, cannot be exclusively relied upon.
A big doctor bill, while distasteful, would still be the preferred outcome.
It’s a terrible thing for a human being to die needlessly, but at the hands of the U.S. government? Unimaginable, unconscionable. I am so angry, I am shaking. My deepest condolences to you and your family.
I hope your brother-in-law can find the strength to continue to publicize the monstrous repercussions of this policy. I am fearful that your tragedy will not be the last of its ilk.
I sincerely wish John Roberts sleepless, torturous nights for the rest of his well-insured life. He could have stopped this madness.
So sorry for your loss, will be praying for your family.
This should be all over Drudge, all over Fox. It will be ignored instead.
How horrible. Your news fills me with deep sadness…and righteous anger. Please accept my deepest condolences and my prayers. This doubles my already intense resolve to extirpate the ACA from American life.
Melanie, my heart breaks for your entire family and anger fills me on your behalf.
Your family is in my prayers.
Disgraceful! Condolences and prayers, Melanie…
So sorry for your loss. Just tragic and unnecessary.
Your brother, Doug, is a weekly guest on the Doug Kellett morning radio show here in Raleigh and I thoroughly enjoy when he’s on. He brings insight and thoughtful commentary to the show with a nice tinge of humor.
He told this story the last time he was on the show and I was devastated. The story is so tragic. I had to stop what I was doing to sit on my bed and absorb what I can only imagine what you all were going through. Please know that you and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.
What is more devastating is that this won’t be the last time we see this story. Like Socialism, Obamacare (same thing) is going to kill more people than help. Too many stories out there where cancer patients (and now AIDS/HIV positive patients I’m reading today) are having their perfectly good policies cancelled and are forced into Obamacare policies that will not allow them access to the cancer centers or other facilities they desperately need to live. I just don’t know how anyone can defend this train wreck.
God bless you and the Graham family.
I’m very sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your sister’s story. I am incredibly angry, but I will save that for another time. Our prayers are with you and your family,
I can’t add much except that I, too, am so very sorry for your loss. This is just beyond horrifying.
I agree with this observation and in light of Melanie’s story, we should all consider– if financially feasible– avoiding the trap of Obamacare. As a self-employed individual, I have made the decision to continue my private insurance although the federal govt has now determined my deductible (basically catastrophic) is illegal and I am now on the hook for maternity, pediatric care, and drug rehabilitation therapy. (I may be grateful for that last one when I start paying my new insurance bill.)
With no children and college tuition to worry about, I have the flexibility to make cuts in other parts of my budget to make up the deficit. However, there are no words to express my resentment that Obamacare has now curtailed aspects of my life that not only bring me pleasure and reward for my hard work, but affect the local economies I support.
My heart just aches for you and your family.
I’m so sorry.
This is terrifying and heartbreaking. I wish I could find better words to express my sorrow for your loss, and especially for your sister’s children. I am keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers.
My sincere condolences for your family’s loss.
I would get so frustrated with my friends when the ACA was being debated because so many would say, “But SOMETHING has to be done! This is better than nothing!” The flawed logic displayed in that argument left me shaking my head, and now we see the human consequences of it. Shameful.
Melanie, my deepest sympathy and sincerest condolences. There are no words.
I pray God’s richest blessings of comfort and consolation for you and your family.
First, I echo the sympathies the others have shared; this is a terrible thing to have happen. Can I ask, the coverage ended 12/31, she got sick but didn’t go to the doctor due to no coverage, but died 2 days prior to 2/2? Is that correct? I want to know so when I tell the story to as many people as will listen that I have the details correct.
This is truly a tragedy because it didn’t have to happen – I am very sorry for your loss.
Tragedies like these occur because the voters of our country greedily and illogically vote for politicians who promise things they cannot possibly deliver. Those dishonest politicians then enact horrible policies that have a real effect on innocent citizens.
Your poor sister and her family are early casualties from a law that will result in much more suffering and death as health insurance is lost and healthcare is rationed. Government control of healthcare is the lynchpin in the Progressive agenda to dominate our lives because it touches all facets of our society.
May God help those of us who were wise enough to vote against Obama and his socialist BS – the rest deserve what they voted for.
My prayers and that of my family will be going out to you in your time of loss.
It’s unsettling to me to mimic the tactics of the welfare statists and use the emotional hammer blow of one family’s misfortune to influence public policy, but perhaps that strategy’s become the only way to move public opinion.
What a sad story.
Allow me to echo the many condolences offered already. This is a tragedy.