Sometimes I think folks are a little too hard on us here in Alabama. The truth is, we are givers. Even while hundreds of thousands of our own citizens work hard every day and still cannot afford health insurance or health care, we provide huge amounts of money for health care for hundreds of thousands of working poor in other states without taking an extra dime for ourselves or our fellow citizens..
No, instead we place posts on face book about friends and relatives in need of money for surgery or cancer treatment. We raise a few hundred dollars with bake sales, pot luck suppers and gospel singings. We place jars on the counters of convenience stores with pictures and labels asking for spare change and spare prayers. We use emergency rooms as a clinic. We go bankrupt. We go without needed treatment until a simple matter becomes life threatening. But we send our hard earned tax dollars to other states so that their poor can be cared for properly.
Hard working Alabamians and their children, citizens who pay taxes, are in danger of health or economic disaster resulting from illness.
We are saints. Sacrificial some might say. I just want to know who is placing us on the altar, and why.
If Alabama decided to participate in Medicaid expansion, 200,000 (very conservatively) of our citizens who can't afford health insurance or health care would immediately be taken care of.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding out there in the Heart of Dixie. Perhaps we assume that because we have decided not to take the medicaid expansion, then our tax obligation will be less. That is wrong. Our taxes are the same whether we expand medicaid or not. Please correct this if it is wrong.
I have heard the debates. In three years the federal government will pay ninety percent of the bill instead of one hundred percent. And that ten percent is a lot of money. But that ninety percent is far, far more. It just makes good sense. But even if it costs a little, what is the price of the misery we could avoid for our brothers and sisters?
While we are debating, people are suffering, and dying young. Some are children. They could be fully covered for no extra cost for three years. Probably save untold physical and economic disaster. Lives could be saved. Families could be saved.
But for some reason, we just want to keep on giving to others, not thinking about ourselves.
For some reason.
Please, please, tell me what that good reason is.
Alabamians are dying to find out.
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I'm gonna chime in on this one... last year I was a newly single Mother of 3. My adjusted gross income for 2013 was a whopping $29k. I lost health insurance coverage in July of 2013. I spent $3,600 out of pocket on medical expenses last year (mostly because I didn't want to go blind, but my eyeballs were not cooperating). As a family of four, we BARELY made enough to qualify for ACA coverage. When I ran the numbers "guesstimating" my 2014 income as just a bit less we would have been shit out of luck, for lack of a better term... because a little window popped up on the ACA website that said "Your state has elected not to expand medicaid and you do not earn enough to qualify (even with subsidies)". Thankfully, I do have ACA coverage for 2014, but I know there are sooooo many that are suffering because they don't earn enough to qualify and my family teeters on that line. There is no good reason, none at all. I really wish the dingaling politicians who are toying with peoples lives would just do it ~ Expand Medicaid in Alabama!!!
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