On Monday, January 6, the Texas Democratic Party held a conference call with media to tout how Obamacare is supposedly helping Texans obtain health insurance. The call included party leaders like state Rep. Trey Martinez-Fischer (D-Dallas), the White House’s regional communications director, another senior policy adviser to the president for communications and strategy, and a couple of Texans who say Obamacare has helped them.
One of those is Lucy Horne, who claims that her insurance company diagnosed her with “acid reflux” as a pre-existing condition and denied her coverage. The other is Mark Sullivan, of Austin.
Sullivan says that Obamacare allowed him to follow Nancy Pelosi’s advice, more or less, and leave his job at one of Austin’s many high-tech firms.
“For the past two years, I have been working at a tech industry in Austin, and for about a year now I’ve wanted to start — wanted to leave my job and start my own business,” Sullivan said according to the transcript of the call provided to media. “And among all the things I had to consider, there were two concerns that I couldn’t brush over. One was my reduced income after leaving my job, and two was my living expenses and how to pay for them.
“And of all the living expenses that I would still have to pay for when I left my job, health insurance was the only one that was going to increase as a result of becoming a small business owner. So I got to work looking at my options. And thanks to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act I was able to take the plunge on entrepreneurship sooner than I expected.
“I was able to enroll in healthcare.gov on October 5th, and I picked a plan and they gave me equivalent coverage as to what I had with my employer.
“Because of my reduced income, I was able to qualify for a premium tax credit that actually lowered my monthly premium to $78 per month which is actually below what my previous employee contribution was.”
Emphasis added. He managed to get through Healthcare.gov, which is a small victory of its own.
Sullivan added that he is “confused” by small business owners who say that Obamacare is crippling their ability to hire and forcing them to move workers off full-time to part-time status. But he has no employees at this point, and hasn’t seen that particular well-documented effect of Obamacare personally. Perhaps he will be less confused once success forces him to make painful decisions.
What Sullivan has, at this point, is a one-man start-up being subsidized by welfare, in the form of his subsidized health insurance. Someone is paying that cost. Just not Mr. Sullivan.
Losing enough income to qualify for a new form of welfare is now considered “success?”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member