General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUPDATE: Charlene Dill story HITS MSN (mother murdered by Rick Scott's Medicaid Gap)
You might remember the thread a couple of weeks ago on the death of a young Florida mother of three with a heart condition who couldn't receive healthcare b/c she fell into the state's enormous Medicaid Gap created by Republicans refusing to take federal monies to expand the program. Thom Hartmann picked up the story from that post and then Truth-Out did a piece.
After a cover story in the Orlando Weekly, the story has caught fire, being featured on Al Sharpton's show, Alex Wagner's show and on Huffington Post Live.
Tomorrow night Lawrence O'Donnell will have it on, and The Maddow Show producers have also reached out to primary contacts for the story.
While the story threatens to go national, I hope everyone remembers that the politics in play are state and local. And it couldn't be any more clear to someone paying attention to what's going on in Tallahassee.
ALEC-led Republicans are leaving dead Americans on their ideological battlefield. They are being helped along by ALEC-led "think tanks" and publications and lobbyists with lots and lots of money. Now they're moving into local government:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/06/conservative-group-alec-city-local-government
Conservative group Alec trains sights on city and local government
American Legislative Exchange Council forms new initiative
Offshoot will target villages, towns, cities and counties
Now the council is looking to take its blueprint for influence over statewide lawmaking and drill it down to the local level. It has already quietly set up, and is making plans for the public launch of, an offshoot called the American City County Exchange (ACCE) that will target policymakers from villages, towns, cities and counties.
We need to get mad about Charlene Dill, and we need to direct that energy where it can do some good: state and local legislative bodies that have created two sets of rules -- one for us and one for them. Now, they're creating two sets of outcomes -- one for us and one for them. And we can't go on like this. It's no wonder the most talked about economics book of the year is a warning us that the gap between the rich and poor threatens to destroy society. I'm feeling it, Mr. Piketty.
State and local government holds the power here, which I suppose is predictable since they've spent so much time and money in buying our corrupt political system here in Florida. We need to understand how that turns up the heat. It's our own neighbors who think it's just fine for young mothers to die if they have the "wrong kind" of job -- the kind that doesn't pay or offer benefits. This exploitable labor exists, in fact, because of policies set by our state and local politicians. In Florida, that' means ALEC.
If you live in Orange County or want to know more about this, visit http://www.votelocal2014.org
Here's the story from the Orlando Weekly:
http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144?pgno=1
The perils of Floridas refusal to expand Medicaid
Charlene Dill is one of an estimated 2,000 people who expected to face dire health issues due to lack of access to care
Charlene Dill didnt have to die.
On March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a safety net where there wasnt one already. They hustled, as Woolrich describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down, cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery that has yet to reach many average people.
(snip)
Dills death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Acts intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and Woolrich people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Acts subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obamas health care plan.
(snip)
These are the people in the coverage gap the unknowns, the single mothers, the not-quite-retired the unnamed 750,000 Floridians who are suffering while legislators in Tallahassee refuse to address the issue in this years legislative session, which ends on May 2. The working poor who used to be the middle class are on a crash course with disaster for no logical reason. Charlene Dill, at the age of 32, didnt have to die.
In the Sunshine State, 440,000 people signed up on the health care exchange, while 125,000 were judged to be eligible for Medicaid. Florida, with its retirees and low-wage workers, is on the demand side of health care.
We are No. 2, plus we have a federal exchange, SEIU state council president Monica Russo says. I find that quite a statement. Floridians need health care. I think [Republicans] can campaign all they want against health care, but at the end of the day, what are they going to do? Rip health care out of their hands?
snip -- much more at link: http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144?pgno=1
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)And yet, that does seem to be the plan.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Last edited Sun Apr 13, 2014, 07:36 PM - Edit history (1)
bring it to the floor. that's the power that these corporate interests have. key tea party republicans in the house... gerrymandered districts... voila, aparthied.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)Last edited Sun Apr 13, 2014, 08:24 PM - Edit history (1)
The Republicans in these Red States are GUILTY of murder.
Many people in the states who refused the money to expand Medicaid will DIE as a direct result of the selfish and callous choices made by their Republican leadership.
Find faces to put on the statistics.
Paper the Red States from end to end with billboards like this with:
they go to a doctor.
You could too,
IF you had a Democratic Governor.
So the Fuch WHAT if Limbaugh, Fox News, Boehner, McConnell & the Republicans whine and throw a fit.
It is The TRUTH:
People WILL DIE because of their selfishness and callousness.
Lets SEE the
Working Class faces faces and the families of those killed by Republican selfishness!
They can go to the doctor when THEY get sick.
You could too IF you had a Democratic Governor.
You will know them by their WORKS!
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)malaise
(268,967 posts)Now we need to show ads from bedsides and from funerals.
Make them pay
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)the republicans are generating a body count from their culture wars. we're feeling it, big time. this needs to be an ad campaign! we need money and support to make that happen.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Republican spite, I wonder?
How many need to die in the name of pretending government can't help people?
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)DirkGently
(12,151 posts)The ACA. By which they mean ... killing the most vulnerable among us.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)i'm talking, of course, about TEXTGATE and the local ALEC-led politicians breaking the law to keep Earned Sick Time off the ballot.
They want workers to vulnerable which keeps our economy fragile, which re-enforces their "woe be to the wealth creators" narrative. I've never imagined politics could be so craven.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)we've been saying this forEVER
real people are suffering big time. that's the issue. if the party puts it out there, it WILL resonate.
we need new leadership -- more Elizabeth Warrens, more Sherrod Browns. We're bleeding real blood out here.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)... on actual physical harm. Liberals break a window and it's violent lawlessness. Conservatives draw a bead on Federal cops with their rifles or condemn the poor to death by starvation or lack of access to care, and somehow it's to be assumed their hearts (?) are in the right place.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)The entire party has battered spouse syndrome
sakabatou
(42,152 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)There should be a federal exchange so resident of GOP run states can still sign up for healthcare.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)seems like when they're putting the lives of Americans at risk, that some kind of power could be exercised from the federal level. the supreme court left it here... so can't SOMETHING be done?
i don't see congress stepping up... maybe the senate.
SunSeeker
(51,550 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)tea party extremists. not every republican in florida walks this walk, but they're all culpable for letting their party rot to the core like this.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)Last edited Sun Apr 13, 2014, 09:16 PM - Edit history (1)
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)we need capacity and resources. we need to get Rick Scott out of office and sweep these republicans out of the state house.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)I'd like to hear both of them on the issue.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)i'd really like to see maddow dig into the deep politics, and i'd love to see a discussion panel an hayes
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Senator Bill Nelson is actually trying to do something at the Federal level -- it's at the very end of the Orlando Weekly article -- to move those Medicaid Expansion monies into a grant program for public hospitals. it's just too little too late, and there's little hope we'll be able to move and such proposal thru the House.
johnnyreb
(915 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)SmittynMo
(3,544 posts)Again, more proof that they could care less about the less fortunate. They have now created their own little special death panel. I can't wait for Rachel tomorrow night. I hope she slams these f*ckers, and calls them out for who they really are, and what they stand for. I hope the GOP will be no more after 2016. This is NOT what this country is about. To be this heartless about our fellow Americans is a sin, and they should pay. Alan Grayson is correct. Don't get sick. I pray for the family she left behind and hope this truly goes national.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Because of census-year gerrymandering, florida doesn't have a chance of taking back the state house until after 2020 -- the party needs to take a longview here. invest in infrastructure -- support the progressive community on the ground. GOTV in 2014 and 2016.
It's going to be a long hard crawl out of the giant, smoldering hole republicans have left in our state.
Bandit
(21,475 posts)The Gerry-Mandered lines will not be changed to favor Democrats unless Democrats are in the Majority to change them. To be able to address those Gerry-Mandered districts we MUST elect Democrats BEFORE 2020 or we will have to wait until 2030.
William769
(55,145 posts)And I know what these fucking criminals are doing to this State.
Just when I thought I couldn't get more pissed, I am proved wrong once again.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)we can only take so much outright aggression without needing a break or needing to break something.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)Executions. Denying health coverage to the poor.
How are these guys pro-life????
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)sheshe2
(83,750 posts)Thanks napkinz!
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)SmittynMo
(3,544 posts)Excerpt from the article:
Congressman Alan Grayson, who received significant criticism for his Die Quickly placard, which he released in reaction to Republican obstruction of the ACA, replied more specifically to the case.
Charlenes sad and unnecessary death illustrates what I have said all along: For the 1 million of Floridians who cannot afford health care coverage, the Republican health care plan is simply this: Dont get sick, Grayson says. If you do get sick, and if you cannot afford coverage, the GOP has nothing for you but prayer. The Republicans have no answers, no alternatives, no ideas, no safety nets, no sympathy, no empathy and no compassion. Just these three words: Dont get sick. The GOPs refusal to expand Medicaid, at no cost to Florida, has put the GOPs appalling disregard for human life on full display. As far as theyre concerned, if youre not a fetus, youre on your own. The Republicans would literally rather watch people like Charlene die than give them the care that they need to stay healthy and alive. Its disgusting and sadistic.
Grayson entered Woolrichs account of Dills death which she published online into the Congressional Record, even having a representative deliver the document at Dills funeral, which was, again, crowd-funded by Woolrich on GoFundMe.com. Woolrich raised $4,000 in less than a week to pay for the funeral.
I memorialized Charlenes life and death in the Congressional Record, because the Republicans want to pretend that none of this is happening. That Charlene didnt die as a result of their callous neglect that no Floridians will die as a result of their willful refusal to expand Medicaid at no cost, Grayson says. But Im not going to let them forget. Im not going to let them pretend. This is not a game; this is very real. This is life and death.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Which is exactly why it so infuriates Republicans. He called them out on what they're actually suggesting.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)this is a losing narrative for them b/c people are literally dying for not being able to get healthcare. it's not an abstraction.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)...meeting people's needs. It undermines the whole narrative that somehow we don't need government, which allows government to serve money instead.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)as long as it's "unspoken," it's hidden and we're not able to fix it.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Even my clopidigrel, which is generic plavix but still costly. I get them from a reliable mail-order pharmacy. I also take metoprolol, lisinopril, and furisomide. But what happens if I need more than just meds to keep the ol' ticker running smoothly and the BP under control? I hope this stupid state grows a brain by then and expands medicaid, or I will be in the same boat as Ms. Dill. I may have to move.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)the whole state of florida would grind to a halt if the working poor decide they can't afford to live here. we have the highest number of people working the lowest paying jobs anywhere in the country (that's central florida specifically, Disney et al).
Tsiyu
(18,186 posts)maryellen99
(3,788 posts)She is a VICTIM, not the ones in those stupid anti Obamacare ads.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)me b zola
(19,053 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)nt