To the editor:

A friend of mine works 35 hours a week at a minimum wage job ($7.25/hour). He doesn’t get benefits as the employer keeps his employees’ hours under 40 hours per week for this reason.

I helped my friend call the Kansas Health Care Exchange to get health insurance. He was told he doesn’t qualify for any assistance, but he can pay $79 a month, $948 a year, for coverage that would kick in 60 percent after he had paid $6,300 in expenses out of pocket. He was also told, with his income, he will not be fined for not signing up to be insured.

So his options are to sign up for insurance and, if he has a health issue, pay up to $7,248 of his $13,195 gross income (55 percent) for care, or he can do nothing, go to the emergency room and run up the stratospheric rates for treatment that only the uninsured have to pay. (My insurance company bragged how they whittle my hospital charges to less than 20 percent of the bill, screwing the caregivers while collecting huge premiums from us for their “service.”)

My friend won’t be able to pay those rates of course so the losses are absorbed by the hospital and ultimately those of us who have insurance.

Kansas didn’t accept the federal money for people who need help affording insurance. I don’t know how his situation would change if he lived in a state that accepted federal money. All I know is that, for many people, this isn’t fair, and it isn’t affordable.