Official update to our son’s health insurance gap fiasco follows.
After scores of email messages locally and nationally to every newspaper, tv station, talk show host, to every Louisiana state rep and senator plus Governor Jindal, after letters to the editor and hours upon hours of calling up the chain of the Medicaid system, hospital billing, reporters, etc., Robby and his wife were given preferential treatment. Both are now Medicaid-covered until January. The good news came moments after completing another interview, this one to be used in an infomercial to convince legislators that many thousands of real Louisianians are suffering big-time because of Jindal’s cruel callousness in refusing Medicaid dollars.
Robby does not fit the stereotype and he needed to be silenced. He is savvy, well-educated (though may never be a lawyer now) with access to a phone, a computer, and time to use both since sick and jobless. He happens to have a mom who also fights like hell. What about the other 5 million in the insurance coverage gap? What about those suffering in silence without a voice? Our fight is far from over.
No doctor, no money, no insurance equals no medical care. Even after forced to the ER with out-of-control infections, patients have the toughest time being seen by specialists who refuse to see the uninsured. There is no maintenance so that diabetes, heart disease, cancer, psychiatric disorders, etc. fester without proper meds until the next ER visit. The U.S. has the finest doctors, nurses, hospitals, and technology. But the delivery system stinks as it is based on ability to pay instead of medical need. This is why the infant mortality and life expectancy rates are abysmal with more spent per capita and less to show for it.
I hesitated to tell our personal victory lest it be misconstrued as a change of heart from Jindal and his cohorts. There is no element of caring. The head guy of Medicaid lambasted and blamed Obamacare for Robby’s misery. Total bullshit. The “safety net” fabrication offered by Jindal’s minions and accepted without question by reporters, is also total bullshit.
http://beta.criticalmention.com/...
Good people are dying. The hospital advocate trying to help has seen the roadblocks escalate. Terminal cancer patients do not even get the courtesy of a call-back from the Medicaid office. Safety net my ass!
