Michele Bachmann today on Fox News said that the 40 million people in America who don’t have health insurance chose to not have it and just decided to “roll the dice” instead of paying for it — which they can afford to do.
“The premise was made that people don’t buy insurance because they can’t afford it. That’s not true. There are people who just decide that they want to roll the dice and take their chances, that they won’t need to have health insurance.”
“The average cost of a family policy offered by employers was $13,375 this year, up 5% from 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust survey found. By comparison, wages rose 3% over that period, the study said,” reported USA Today in 2009.
Today, CNN reported, “The cost to cover the typical family of four under an employer plan is expected to top $20,000 on health care this year, up more than 7% from last year, according to early projections by independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc.,” and added, “The projected increase marks the fifth year in a row that health care costs will rise between 7% and 8% annually.”
Note that these are employer-based healthcare plan statistics. An increasing number of people are self-employed, and even though unemployment is dropping , it is still over 8%.
The idea that 40 million people — or even a large fraction of 40 million Americans — don’t have health insurance even though they could afford it not only smacks of being out of touch, it suggests Americans are ignorant and stupid.
Chalk this comment of Michele Bachmann’s up to her own ignorance and stupidity. For example, earlier this month, Michele Bachmann called President Obama a “health care dictator†and said under “Obamacare†he could mandate the number of children a family is allowed to have.
People die every day because they don’t have health insurance. Perhaps, since it is so affordable, Michele Bachmann would like to chip in and help some of the 40 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance to pay for it.