In my bread-and-butter job, I'm an advocate for home health care. The patients of home health are the frail elderly and the low-income disabled, which means 90% of the revenue stream for home care is Medicare/Medicaid. Those of you who follow health care politics know that this translates into home care sitting on the bottom rung of the health care pay scale. In fact, home care providers qualify as the "working poor."
These working poor make house calls to dispense their care and compassion, which means they drive (especially here in rural Wisconsin). When your drive for your living, you get killed when gas costs go insane, as they are now. When you're poor and you drive for a living, you reach a point when you just can't do it. In this case, that will mean frail elderly patients and low-income disabled will either go without care or be forced into institutional care (where the risks for them and the costs for all of us are higher).
I asked Exxon to help. The reply is below the fold.
Cross-posted at Street Prophets.
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