Libs Call for ObamaCare to Cover Free Housing

by Dave Blount | October 31, 2014 2:42 pm

ObamaCare isn’t just a shove down the slippery slope toward socialized medicine. At the bottom of the slope is communism. The liberal establishment doesn’t think we can get there fast enough. From a piece in The Atlantic entitled, “Should Obamacare Help Pay for Housing?“:

Since January 1 of this year, James Barnes has had pretty decent health care. He gets insulin for his diabetes and the needles to inject it, blood pressure medication, access to a psychiatrist and counselor and optometrist, and frequent visits to the doctor, all for free.

That’s because he is one of the few said to have actually benefited from ObamaCare — at the expense of the majority who have been punished by it.

Barnes lives in Maryland, one of the dozens of states that expanded Medicaid to people with incomes at or below 138 percent of the poverty level as part of the Affordable Care Act. For Barnes and thousands like him, that expansion has meant access to services like physical therapy, mental-health treatment, x-rays, dialysis, hospice care, eye exams, substance-abuse treatment, podiatrists, and oncologists.

What Barnes does not have, however, is a place to live. Since getting out of jail a year and a half ago, he’s stayed at half a dozen homeless shelters in Baltimore as he’s looked for work. He carries his belongings—and his insulin—with him in two plastic bags, the type you’d get at CVS.

Being homeless doesn’t exactly help Barnes, who is 51, become healthier. When he first started living on the streets, he’d have to borrow a few dollars to buy food to keep his diabetes in check. Even now, he isn’t allowed to bring food into the homeless shelters, so he doesn’t often eat produce or healthy food, instead relying on the starchy, heavy food at soup kitchens. He avoids taking any of his medications that could make him urinate frequently, since it’s so hard to find somewhere to go to the bathroom, and people at homeless shelters often steal his needles and medication.

Needless to say, The Atlantic does not suggest that his life would have turned out differently if he had pursued a career instead of getting himself arrested.

The federal government will spend $931 billion on the Medicaid expansion between now and 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Some of that money will be spent taking care of homeless people like Barnes, who can be particularly expensive to treat. Homelessness exacerbates all kinds of diseases, including diabetes. Those without homes are three to six times more likely to get ill than housed people. Homelessness also makes it more difficult for people with mental health and substance abuse issues to get treatment.

One of the best ways to keep homeless people healthy, studies have found, is to give them somewhere to live—the so-called “housing first” model, which gets the homeless off the streets and saves hospitals money in caring for them.

That’s led many advocates for the homeless to wonder—if we’re spending so much money through Obamacare to expand health coverage for poor people, why not spend it to house some of them, too?

“All I’m saying is, if I can take care of someone at a lower cost by providing them with housing, why wouldn’t the federal government let me?” said Dr. Mitch Katz, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Somehow I doubt providing free housing through ObamaCare is going to lower costs.

“There’s a growing acceptance of the idea that for homeless people, housing is a valuable health service. That’s the health service that’s going to help them the most.”

If killing your baby is a health service, why not a free home? It can be paid for by the slave labor of those of us still willing to work, until such a time as we become hopelessly outnumbered and the whole mess collapses into straightforward labor-camp-with-a-gun-at-your-back type Soviet communism.

After they have finished nationalizing medical care, housing will be next. Then comes food. That stage of our history will be called the Holodomor Part II. Those who survive will see the glorious abolition of all private property. Liberal utopia will have been achieved at last. Everyone will be equal — except the ruling class, which will be far more equal, as in Soviet Russia.

james-barnes
Pony up: James Barnes wants a free home.

On a tip from Henry. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/obamacare/libs-call-obamacare-cover-free-housing/