Shua has a reasonable point about the ACA and accessibility, and I wish that people who support the law, as I do, were more focused on this problem. People I know who are on the front lines of health care reform emphasize the same point: Having insurance is no guarantee that you have access to affordable care, and it's an increasingly unreliable proxy given the growing share of expenses for which patients are responsible. Moreover, for people below or near the poverty line having to pay anything is frequently enough to deter them from seeking care.
It doesn't require that much pessimism to conclude from current trends in politics and healthcare that, five to ten years from now, access to care will be no better or worse than it was prior to the ACA despite >90% insurance rates in most states. (This is particularly likely if the Supreme Court continues working in concert with Republican governors to gut the bill, but I digress.)
Anyway, the interesting point at stake in this case is whether someone who relies on altruism and reciprocity can legitimately reject the welfare state. What he's doing is more than a bit ridiculous when you think about it in terms of creating moral hazard or the impossibility of crowd-funding meeting the health care needs of more than a small number of people. For that matter, if he had been insured, preventive care or an earlier screening might have prevented this situation or diminished its severity. All of this should be pointed out.
But does anything about his situation imply hypocrisy? No. Just selfishness and stupidity. I hope that he raises enough money to pay his bills, but if he doesn't and he dies because he can't get the care that he needs, he deserves a Darwin Award.
So it's better to be begging for the full cost of a hospital bill, rather than simply begging for the $10,000 out-of-pocket cost if he had insurance?
What are the odds this guy and the sheep who are giving him their money are going to pay the full sticker price for his bill? I'll bet they do. If he had insurance, all they'd have to pay is his co-pay and however much he needed to reach his out-of-pocket cap, and the insurance company would pay maybe half the bill.
