Is this the official alternative republican health care plan?
If it is, we wouldn't know until we elected them, because they're not divulging any details, Mittens needs some space to, uhhh....creatively deal with his ever changing concept of reality.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius (PDF), Perry opined that giving poor people health care and setting up exchanges that make health insurance cheaper are both “brazen intrusions into the sovereignty of our state.”
“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the [Affordable Care Act] power grab,” Perry wrote. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under the Orwellian-named PPACA would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ What they would do is make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.” He added that Medicaid is “broken” and “already financially unsustainable,” and that in his view an expansion “would threaten even Texas with financial ruin.”
“Rick Perry’s announcement is both cruel and negligent,” the Texas Democratic Party retorted in a media advisory. “No person with a speck of intelligence would turn down billions in federal dollars that would be a boon to our economy and help Texans. But then again this is Rick Perry. Rick Perry could’ve brought billions in federal dollars to Texas, reduced the rate of the uninsured and improved the quality of life for Texans. Rick Perry’s Texas solution is to let Texans stay ill and uninsured. That is not a health care plan.”
The state of Texas has the most restrictive Medicaid program in the country, requiring that a family of three make no more than $188 per month to qualify. Under federal rules administered by the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid would be expanded to 133 percent of the poverty level, covering an additional 1.2 million Texans under the program. That would cause a 46 percent increase in Medicaide enrollment — which the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF) estimated would cost the state 3 percent more in 2019 than it currently pays – and the federal government would have picked up the rest.
Meanwhile in His Excellency Chief Zombie Governor Rick Perry's Magic Kingdom of Florida, it was revealed that they have been struggling for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years.
Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.
The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
According to the Post, the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.”
That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because the disease appears 0 but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued, Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years.
With health officials preoccupied by the challenge of restructuring, the CDC report went unseen, and an order even went out for the hospital to be closed immediately, six months ahead of schedule.
According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure.
Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.
The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
According to the Post, the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.”
That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because the disease appears 0 but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued, Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years.
With health officials preoccupied by the challenge of restructuring, the CDC report went unseen, and an order even went out for the hospital to be closed immediately, six months ahead of schedule.
According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure.
Maybe the prudent course of action, for the rest of America would be to be ready to impose an Emergency medical health quarantine on Republican Governed Potential Plague States, like Florida and Texas...because they sure can't deal with their own reality and you might have to have your vaccinations updated if you are planning a little vacation to Miami.....
2 comments:
GOP governors refusing to play nice is purely symbolic. The recent health care ruling by the Soupreems made sure that the gubmint would step in with the funding AND handle setting up the expanded coverage if a state refused to do it themselves. All these posers are doing is making a public statement of non-compliance, then waiting with their hands out as the government does it for them.
Pure politics of the TV era, nothing more.
The problem for these pricks is that this program will benefit a lot of people (especially in Texas, South Carolina, and Florida) who aren't currently covered, and once folks become happy with their new coverage there will be some backlash against the assholes who seem determine to keep them from having it.
As time goes by (humming the tune as I type) there will be greater and greater acceptance of this new law. And maybe then we can get it worked out for single payer Medicare for all.
Just be grateful you're in a country that doesn't consider good health a privilege.
The Republican Health Care Plan is cancel the Affordable Health Care Act and you buy you own insurance - and if you can's then die and decrease the surplus population.
the Ol'Buzzard
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