Uncovered
I am reaching out to say how important your piece was on the Medicaid gap and unnecessary death of Charlene Dill (“Falling into the Gap,” April 9). We – at the Center for American Progress Action Fund – have been working on health care broadly and the Medicaid gap specifically for a long time and I am not sure if I have read a better piece on the subject. Thank you!
Emma Shapiro, state communications manager, Center for American Progress Action Fund
As an entrepreneur and small-business owner, I was originally offended by the denial of Medicaid expansion in Florida for all of the economic reasons. It is hard for me to keep listening to our governor talk about jobs, jobs, jobs when you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that an influx of $51 billion to your state will create jobs, and not just the minimum-wage jobs he is so proud to take credit for.
Then it made me mad that Florida taxpayers send their taxes to the federal government and our current Florida legislators refuse to let us get it back and are happy to send our tax dollars to other states to insure their working poor. But now, I am furious. I am furious that someone I knew – someone I cared about as a decent, caring and hard-working mother of three (now motherless children) – died while at work in a stranger’s home, just so House Speaker Will Weatherford could thump his chest and his cronies could play their tea party terrorist politics with people’s lives.
These “fiscal conservatives” now have three motherless children to raise when all their mother needed was health care that was being paid for with federal tax money and wasn’t even coming out of the state’s budget. Now, I have another good friend and single mother of three with real and severe health problems that is being denied Medicaid because she worked too much last year but got paid too little. I pray every night before I go to sleep that Kathleen will make it through the night, and I’m going to make it my business to fight every day to replace those chest thumpers in Tallahassee with real leaders that care about the people that work and live in this state.
Keepnreal, via orlandoweekly.com
