Er, have all the sympathy you want for tornado victims in Oklahoma, but I suggest you save some for its poorest citizens no matter what part of the state they’re in. Here’s the background:
Oklahoma Speaker of the House T.W. Shannon has pulled the plug on Gov. Mary Fallin’s plans to save the Insure Oklahoma program, which provides healthcare to working poor Oklahomans.
As a result, 9,000 people currently getting state and federally subsidized private insurance through the program will be left without coverage.
Some 30,000 Oklahomans are currently covered in something called Insure Oklahoma. The program is being discontinued at the end of the year. THe ACA will pick up approximately 21,000 of them, but roughly 9,000 people, the poorest on the rolls, won’t be eligible for its exchange, for reasons I don’t quite understand (ah, further information here). Anyway, the governor had tried to keep funding the Insure Oklahoma program to cover these folks, but . . .
“I don’t believe providing health insurance is a proper or efficient function of government,” Shannon said. “As conservatives, we should stand against such desires no matter where they come from, be it local or state government, federal bureaucrats or President Obama himself.
“I have no plans to continue a government-run insurance program that will cost $50 million to serve 9,000 Oklahomans. I simply do not believe it’s the government’s job,” Shannon said.
Yep. As conservatives, we’d rather see people sicken and die than spend any money trying to help them.
What with tornados and heartless politicians, I can’t imagine why anyone in his/her right mind would live in such a state.
I can understand politicians bloviating like this, there have been unfeeling politicians since the dawn of time. What I don’t get is the public buying in to this lack of empathy. It’s almost like people are forgetting that they could be without insurance themselves, and be in the same situation.
What REALLY doesn’t work are the same conservatives trying to play up their Christian values. Because yeah, the whole “poor get no free ride/insurance/etc” with the same candidate then trying to say “but I’m a Christian” – um, no. Doesn’t work, can’t have it both ways. I just wish more people would call these sorts of politicians out.
Meanwhile, poor Oklahoma. They get one of these mega storms every decade or so.
The problem is this farce of “meritocracy” where people have been trained to believe that people actually get what they deserve more often than not.
Any type of statistical odds (luck) involved in anything is dismissed, and replaced with merit fanaticism adhered to and believed in as sure as a religious devoutness.
I see it as a result of the “American Dream” having died, and Americans being in denial. Trying to hold their crumbling world together with the cheeks of their asses. It’s a desperate attempt to believe, against all evidence, that life really is fair, and the America is still great, because the awful truth is just too unbearable.
Those who do face up to the truth? Most are prescribed anti-depressants I imagine. I think that’s the real reason there’s been a steady uptick in the use of anti-depressants. :/