From Forbes, a post titled, “Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills-You And I Pick Up Her Tab“:

The thing is, among the debts listed in the bankruptcy filing are $4500 worth of medical bills—obligations that, presumably, would have largely been paid had Mary chosen to purchase health insurance, something she will be required to do come 2014 when the insurance mandate of the healthcare reform law kicks in. [...]

As it turns out, Mary Brown, the named plaintiff in the case that seeks to bring Obamacare to an end, is the poster child for why the mandates in the ACA are so completely necessary.

Here’s the link to the L.A. Times article on the same woman.

Today’s L.A. Times letters to the editor, because our voices matter:

Healthcare foe spreads the pain

Re “Key healthcare law foe went bankrupt — with medical bills,” March 9

How appropriate that Mary Brown, claiming government’s intrusion into personal freedom in a lawsuit over the healthcare law, used a governmental option to stick the taxpayers with all of her debts.

Instead of her boisterous claims of righteousness that she “always pays her medical bills” and “I’m not fighting just for me,” she could have indeed taken the high road and excluded those medical bills from her bankruptcy.

I for one wish she would stop “fighting for me” and accept the healthcare law — so I wouldn’t have to pick up the tab for her medical bills.

Blair Caugherty

Palm Desert

***

And Brown stiffed all of us for more than $4,500 in unpaid medical bills.

Where is the outrage from the Republicans over the complete and total irresponsibility of this person deliberately refusing to pay for medical coverage and expecting all of us to pay for her bills?

Personal responsibility used to be the foundational bulwark of Republicans’ ideology, but their irrational hatred of President Obama has driven them to such extremes that they are increasingly not recognizable as a party that stands for anything other than intolerant social issues and wacky economic theories.

Where are the party’s leaders?

James B. Parsons

Canyon Lake