Showing posts with label Tom Muskus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Muskus. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Are "burn your Obamacare card" proponents incurring potential liability?

Progressives have been first dumbfounded, and then enraged, by the right-wing campaign to convince the uninsured not to purchase health insurance on the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act.. The young, healthy uninsured whom the exchanges need to sign up in order to thrive are being urged to "burn your Obamacare draft card," as the Koch-funded Freedomworks puts it.  Here's Kevin Drum's reaction:
Nice. I wonder if FreedomWorks plans to help out the first person who takes them up on this and then contracts leukemia? I'm guessing probably not.

What's next? A campaign to get people to skip wearing seat belts? To skip using baby seats in cars? To skip vaccinations for their kids? It's times like this that words fail those of us with a few remaining vestiges of human decency.
There may be legal ramifications to Drum's question.  Might those who gratuitously offer a kind of malign financial advice to the general public -- in particular, to a disproportionately young and poor segment of the public -- incur liability?