Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Floridian w/kids makes too much for Medicaid earning only $267 a MONTH!

We don’t need to expand a big-government program to provide for everyone’s needs. What we need is to shrink the cost of health care and expand opportunities for people to get a job so more people can afford it. --Rick Scott, 2013

To put this heartlessness in simple terms, a single parent in Florida with two children who makes over $3,200 a year is INELIGIBLE for Medicaid because according to the our state legislature... that is TOO MUCH money. Folks, that's $266.66 a month. This is a travesty. We are a major state but this is one of the lowest, if not THE lowest, threshold in the country. Think about that sheer stupidity for a second. Where on God's green Florida can you pay rent, utilities, clothes, food, and possibly still have enough to cover any medical bills for three people on that amount?

Answer: You can't.

If Rick Scott and our teabag legislature accepted the Medicaid expansion, then a family of three making up to $25,390 would be eligible. That not only seems a lot less cruel, it makes a lot of financial sense. The fed would pick up the entire tab for three years and most of the tab following. Compare that with the Florida GOP's failed alternative plan that would have cost Florida taxpayers billions and hardly cover anyone. (But hey, at least it wouldn't have been tied in anyway to Obama, which was apparently their ONLY concern.)

Add to the mix that their failure to expand Medicaid cost our state 63,000 good-paying Florida jobs. Also add that we are second only to Texas in the number of uninsured, which drives up the cost for everyone due to lack of preventative care and having to pay for high ER costs for preventable medical issues.

Even our teabag-filled FL Senate favored the expansion. Yet our tantrum-throwing, 33-year old man-child in charge of the Florida House, Will Weatherford, steadfastly opposed it. He called it the "worst" form of insurance you can get and stated "Nobody in here wants to be on Medicaid".

NO Sh** Sherlock. No one wants to be poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but not everyone gets to pay $8.43 a month for their healthcare plan, like Rick Scott, Will Weatherford and the rest of the teabag politicians pay--the lowest premiums offered to anyone in Florida.

But for those who need it, it can be a life-saver. For example, Medicaid helped Will Weatherford's own father!

I will concede to the heartless, hypocritical knuckle-draggers that if the poor single mother with two kids earning $267 a month was offered the same gold-plated plan that Florida legislators are given for 8 bucks and some change, then yes, Medicaid expansion would not be necessary. But since that will never happen, it's time to do the right thing by Florida and accept the Medicaid expansion.

That will only happen if we have a regime change in November.

No comments :

Post a Comment