the GOP principled refusal of medicaid expansion
Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 2:44 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/2 ... 47933.html
Governor Jindhal decided, on principle, to not participate in the expansion of Medicaid. This expansion would have covered people like Laura Johnson. Without that expansion, she does not qualify for Medicaid in Louisiana, and cannot afford private health insurance, and cannot afford her medication without insurance.
So what is the solution for people like Johnson, who have worked hard all their lives?
With no health insurance and not enough money for a doctor, Laura Johnson is long accustomed to treating her ailments with a self-written prescription: home remedies, prayer and denial.
Over decades, she made her living assisting elderly people in nursing homes in jobs that paid just above minimum wage and included no health benefits. So even as her feet swelled to such an extent that she could no longer stuff them into her shoes, and even as nausea, headaches and dizziness plagued her, she reached for the aspirin bottle or made do with a teaspoon of vinegar. She propped her feet up on pillows and hoped for relief.
"Before I got sick," she said, "I hadn't been to the doctor in 20 years."
After she collapsed last year and landed in in a local emergency room, doctors diagnosed her with congestive heart failure, high blood pressure and hypothyroid. They ordered her not to work. She arranged a Social Security disability benefit, and she enrolled in Medicaid, the government-furnished insurance program for the poor. She used her Medicaid card to secure needed prescription medications. Her ailments stabilized.
But this year, the state determined that the $819 a month she draws in disability payments exceed the allowable limit. By the federal government's reckoning, her $9,800 annual income made her officially poor. But under the standards set by Louisiana, she was too well off to receive Medicaid.
Governor Jindhal decided, on principle, to not participate in the expansion of Medicaid. This expansion would have covered people like Laura Johnson. Without that expansion, she does not qualify for Medicaid in Louisiana, and cannot afford private health insurance, and cannot afford her medication without insurance.
So what is the solution for people like Johnson, who have worked hard all their lives?