64yo,alcoholic, heavy smoker gets "great deal" with ObamaCare

[Luddly Neddite]

And his name is John Boehner.

Whoops! Obamacare turns out to be great deal personally for Boehner - Salon.com

“Earlier this afternoon, I sat down to try and enroll in the DC exchange under the president’s health care law,” he wrote. “Like many Americans, my experience was pretty frustrating. After putting in my personal information, I received an error message. I was able to work past that, but when I went to actually sign up for coverage, I got this ‘internal server error’ screen”: [Here he embedded an image of an internal server error screen.] Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get past that point and sign up for a health plan. We’ve got a call into the help desk. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying …”

It’s a bummer Boehner got that error message. Tyranny almost. But if he’d reached the point at which he was signing up for coverage, it means he’d already had a chance to shop around and pick a plan. His post is oddly quiet about that part of the experience. Which is curious. As a 64-year-old heavy smoker, it’s a marvel Boehner will be able to purchase individual market coverage at all. I wonder what crazy law guarantees that he can?

Whoops! Obamacare turns out to be great deal personally for Boehner - Salon.com

Word is out now that despite a plethora of good options for a 64-year-old smoker living in Washington, D.C., House Speaker John Boehner will pay higher premiums next year than he did for his Federal Employees Health Benefit Program plan in 2013.

I actually anticipated this when I wrote my article last week about Boehner’s options under Obamacare. But a number of conservatives seem to think the revelation discredits my claim that Obamacare’s actually a pretty good deal for Boehner.

They’re wrong. Obamacare remains a great deal for Boehner and his contemporaries, and while eliminating the law altogether might save Boehner a small amount of money if he reentered FEHBP, it would be a huge liability for a much greater number of 64-year-olds without Boehner’s wealth and job security.

The point of my original piece isn’t that the Affordable Care Act is a better deal than FEHBP (though it’s actually quite comparable). It’s that the law provides a number of affordable options to classes of people (elderly smokers like Boehner, for instance) who would have been priced out of the market or paid stratospheric premiums in the old individual market.

And, boy, is he pissed that so many 64yo, alcoholic chain smoking Americans are even able to get health insurance.