Some people outside Florida wonder why this lady screaming at Rick Scott went viral. It's because we ALL wish we could do it, too.
Rick Scott is currently trying hard to become Trump’s veep. It's no secret. Trying to defend Trump’s insults on Muslims and Latinos on TV, writing gushy editorials, and pushing his cabinet to fall in line behind the Orange Menace. While we all have had plenty of laughs at our bumbling governor's expense, like his stupidity for trying to convince the Fortune 500 companies in California to relocate to Florida on the argument that we have low wages and poor worker protections, (which Jerry Brown smacked down NICELY), Rick Scott is actually no laughing matter.
There is real darkness to his persona. He has killed before, and as Snow said in the last Hunger Games, he has no qualms about killing children.
Rick Scott and his GOP allies targeted cuts in healthcare to literally over ten thousand chronically ill children. The children have been dropped by their specialists, denied treatment, and refused essential life-saving medical equipment.
For decades, families with severely ill children rely heavily on the state system for help, but now the system has changed, and so has the help.
Like for Abby.
She's a bubbly four-year-old who loves toys, eating sweets, and listening to music.
She has an extremely rare, life threatening neurological disorder which affects the formation of the brain. She requires oxygen masks just to survive. She needed to follow a strict schedule of doctor's visits, medications and physical therapy, but her parents got help for her care through Florida's Children's Medical Services (CMS).
Until Rick Scott and his band of GOP assholes took over.
CMS dropped Abby's coverage last summer.
"We've faced cutbacks that have affected her equipment," Kim said. "We've received denials, rejections from doctors; we were dropped from two neurologists,"
Abby is one of 14,029 kids who were dropped from Florida's specialty Medicaid plan for children with chronic health issues.
The drop happened after new state law privatized the Medicaid system in Florida.
The bill was for privatization was sponsored by GOP rep Travis Hutson, who didn’t want to answer questions about this.
To bring you up to speed, Rick Scott and his rightwing friends in the GOP-dominated legislature moved Medicaid into so-called “managed care,” which carved up the state into 11 regions where private insurers could "compete" to serve Medicaid patients in those districts. A man named Mike Fernandez really pushed this concept of privatization, and Rick Scott thought it was a swell idea--right after he took a $125,000 campaign donation from him.
(On what I’m sure is a completely unrelated note, Mike would later write a check for a record-breaking $1 million to Scott's re-election committee, and would then later serve as his campaign's finance co-chair. Two of Mike's companies, at least one of which had a questionable nature, were awarded contracts for some of these regions worth billions in Medicaid funds.)
How’s that privatization working? Not too damn well:
Former director of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr. Louis St. Petery says it was done to save the state money, but the new law did more harm than good.
“Those were kids with aids, kids with heart disease," St. Petery said. "All of which are really very serious problems, so now they're in regular Medicaid HMOs, who are ill equipped to handle kids with complex problems”
He’s right about that. Florida’s health care system is just above third-world. That’s not me saying that, that was a federal judge, who declared that the children remaining in our Medicaid program are stuck with "a second-rate health care system so poorly funded it violates federal law”!
How underfunded is it? A mother with two kids has to make under $3,200 a month to qualify for Medicaid. (It’s really her fault for not being a state legislator: then she’d only have to pay $8.43 a month for government gold-plated health insurance.)
Now, maybe you aren’t moved by Abby's story. Maybe, you are thinking that saving disabled children's lives are a waste of taxpayer money. I get that. The kid had her shot at your mercy when she was just a clump of cells in the mother's womb. Now that she is born, it's tough darts, kid.
Really, I get that. We can't waste money on frivolous things like saving actual children's lives.
Yes, we need to be mindful of our tax dollars. We need to spend our tax money on important things, like $800,000 for upgrading Rick Scott’s mansion. Better yet, a couple million to “spruce up” the entrance. And even more gobs of money on top of that by Scott’s cronies; who gladly paid because Scott has allowed those bastards to run all over us here in Florida. (Naturally, Rick Scott was sued for conducting all of this unseemly business through private email.)
Well, enjoy your lovely mansion, Rick. Really.
I’m glad that you and your classless wife--and I mean classless---can manage to enjoy spending $38,000 in new rugs and $2,000 for a one fraking stupid mirror, while trying to figure out ways to give your crony buddies another billion in tax breaks that will only benefit them.
In the meantime, Anna’s parents can scrounge to pay for frivolous things like oxygen tanks and feeding tubes--you rat bastard.