I want to talk about Elijah Button for a minute. He’s twenty-one years old. He’s a chef in St. Cloud, Florida. He chops onions for a living, and in June the knife slipped and cut his middle finger to the bone.
He didn’t go to the hospital.
Not because he wanted to be tough. Not because he’s some pickup-truck Mussolini with too much pride. He didn’t go because he couldn’t fucking afford it. He dropped his Affordable Care Act plan back in January when his monthly premium jumped $100 — and for a kid working a kitchen job, $100 is the difference between having insurance and praying nothing bad happens.
Then something bad happened.
This is where the freedom-frying hypocrites in Congress need to explain themselves. They let the enhanced federal ACA subsidies expire in January. They knew exactly what that meant. Millions of people like Elijah had to choose between keeping coverage that suddenly cost two or three times what it used to, or rolling the dice on their own bodies. He rolled the dice. He lost. His finger is the receipt.
Republicans love the words personal responsibility. They love family values, the forgotten man, hardworking Americans. They do not love paying for that man to see a doctor when the knife slips. They let the subsidies die, the premiums spiked, and now a kid is wrapping his own finger in a kitchen towel because the emergency room became a luxury item.
This is what their fiscal responsibility looks like in practice. They saved money on the federal ledger. Elijah paid for it with a bone-deep cut and a pot roast he had to cook one-handed.
Personal responsibility, my ass. Take the family-values sign down before you gut the family. You knew exactly what you were doing. Eat shit.
Source story: Florida chef skips hospital care after dropping ACA plan.