Her options are to buy her own health care, get a full time job, or do less work so she can qualify for Medicaid which is socialized. If she buys her own health care she can write off her premiums in her taxes since it isn't provided by employment. Also, if she has a certain amount of medical expenses she can deduct part of that by filling a schedule A.
So, she still has options. If she prioritized her health she could get coverage. I prioritize my health, I have type 1 diabetes; this is why I made sure I got employment with good health benefits.
Ok so I have two points here.
1) She can't work less because she needs the money to pay for college, she can't get full-time work because no one wants to hire a kid in college for a full-time position. I'm not sure exactly what her situation is but I know from my own past experiences self bought health insurance is usually a bad deal at best and a predatory money hole at worst. She might be able to insure herself against catastrophe but I'm not sure many adults could navigate that minefield well, much less a student.
2) I really don't want to get into personal arguments here, but my God isn't it really shitty for you to say "if she prioritized her health"? How old are you? Past school apparently, with a fairly stable job and economic situation. This is a
nineteen year old girl from an
unstable family situation trying to better herself and get to what many of us think of as a normal or even lower-class place in life. Jacked-up college prices in this country already drain her possibilities without adding the stress of finding basic heathcare. Imagine how much stress she's already under, and you have the
balls to act like all of that can be ignored to just "prioritize her health"?
Isn't patriotism wanting your country to be the best it can be? To give its citizens the best possibilities it can? A true "land of opportunity" would take care of all of her issues (especially since they all started totally out of her control) to let her become the best she can be and contribute as much back to the country that she can. Even if you argue that that isn't America's job, wouldn't it be in our best interest to invest in the future like that, to have even more prosperity eventually? This isn't the argument I want you to respond to, I want you to justify saying a girl like her doesn't deserve basic free healthcare. I would like you to think about it though, consider how many people can not live up to what they could be for our country because of policy like you support.