'Healthy Ho's Party': ObamaCare Registration Drive For Prostitutes

November 1st, 2013 11:47 AM

Just when you thought you've seen everything, along comes what's called a "Healthy Ho's Party."

As reported by CNN Money, this is what a "sex worker" in San Francisco called her effort to register others in her "profession" in ObamaCare (video follows with commentary):

Organized by "Siouxsie Q," a Bay Area sex worker, the event was meant to encourage other sex workers to enroll in the new insurance exchanges. It was a rousing success: Nearly 40 men and women attended and almost all of them filed enrollment paperwork.

In the all-cash, off-the-books sex industry, workers can be particularly high risk and insurance is often out of reach. Many sex workers -- a broad term that can refer to a number of services, including sexual massage, prostitution, and escort and dominatrix work -- consider themselves self-employed entrepreneurs who can't afford to purchase healthcare. But that could all change with the Affordable Care Act. [...]

Volunteers from Siouxsie's weekly podcast, The WhoreCast, staffed the event. "Jolene," another sex worker who had already enrolled through the California exchange, was also on hand to talk users through the process. A key detail for the crowd: Enrollment doesn't require users to report their employment.

Before you just chuckle at the absurdity, consider that these folks are going to be getting subsidies for their policies because of their income:

Individuals making less than $46,000 are eligible for a tax credit to offset their monthly costs. Many of the sex workers at the event file W-2s for their legal work, whether it be a part-time job or sex work that falls within the law. Sex workers interviewed by CNNMoney estimated this income to be less than $45,000 a year.

One of the sex workers interviewed said she'd be receiving a credit of $211 a month.

So healthy young people beyond subsidizing unhealthy older people will also be helping to get prostitutes cheap health insurance.

Is that what Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant when she said we'd have to enact ObamaCare to find out what's in it?

(HT Dan Gainor)