More people are going to die needlessly in South Carolina in the next year -- not (only?) in the horror of a few minutes of gunshots, but in the more prolonged horror of undiagnosed and untreated illness from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses.
Last week I wrote Life and Death in Brownback's Kansas: A Must Read Article. The article was by Kai Wright in The Nation. If you read it you'll learn about:
RaDonna, dying of colon cancer and complications, forced to live with her sister, who is now bankrupt because of RaDonna's medical bills. She may have been saved by treatment; or
Martha Talbot, who delayed going to the hospital despite chest pains, finally went and was diagnosed with atrial fibrilliation, and now has $14,000 in bills she and her husband cannot begin to pay.
Similar stories could be told about South Carolina, which like Kansas and 20 other states, has turned down billions from the Federal Government. It's a matter of life and death in South Carolina, as
this article points out. It's also a matter of solvency or financial ruin, as Rep. James Clyburn
wrote.
In South Carolina, nearly 200,000 individuals fall into what is called the coverage gap. By South Carolina not expanding Medicaid, this group of people will not have any health insurance. Many of these individuals are adults without children or with incomes too high to receive health subsidies, but too low to receive Medicaid. So while the elected officials in South Carolina play political games, these individuals are one illness away from bankruptcy.
Time to move from the symbolic but necessary rejection of racist symbols to the substantive but vital rejection of a sadistic ideology that harms your own citizens.