I doubt it will do a lot of good, Rick Scott doesn't care, we know this. But, I had to try, maybe someone who has some influence on him will see it. Maybe I'll hit a nerve. Maybe he will receive thousands of other outraged emails today. I can hope. Rick Scott has announced that, even though he said in the past that if the PPACA was found Constitutional he would comply with it, he now has decided that he will not. Because, of course, expansion of medicaid "would not help Florida Residents". My response to him below the fold.
Governor Scott,
As I was sitting on the side of my bed doing a breathing treatment due to early onset COPD from asthma and chronic bronchitis, I was watching the news as a distraction. What do I see and hear but that you are turning down Federal money to expand Medicaid to help those just above the poverty level because “Florida residents won’t be helped by this program”. Let me tell you about the Florida residents who would be helped by this program.
I am a 42 year old mother of two children. I’m married but my husband has cerebral palsy and is disabled. I have always been the “bread winner” in my family. I have never smoked, I drink rarely and sparingly, I worked from the time I was 16, in fast food, in retail, as a Certified Nursing Assistant. I worked and put myself through school to become an OTA. I graduated with a 3.96 GPA and high honors. I did everything I could to support my family, to better our situation and pull us out of poverty. I should be earning upwards of $30 an hour right now while helping people lead fuller more independent lives. The only reason I am not is because I have had asthma since I was 15 and my employer kept my wages low and did not offer health insurance. For the past 3 years I have been unable to work due to my asthma worsening into COPD.
If I had been able to access health care while I was working, if I had been able to manage my asthma instead of rationing meds, using the ER as primary care because I didn’t have the money to pay a doctor and no insurance company would take me as a customer because of asthma, then I would not be where I am today. Because I didn’t have insurance my asthma got worse. My last year of school I spent a month in the hospital with pneumonia. The year after that I spent two months in the hospital, had bronchitis six times and pneumonia twice. By the end of that year I was diagnosed with COPD, permanent lung damage. Why? Not because of anything I had done, but because I had not been able to afford the health care needed to prevent it. It seems the only mistake I made was not finding a way to get out of minimum wage dead end jobs fast enough. If I had had access to health care, if I had been able to get Medicaid when I was working I would not need government assistance NOW to raise my family.
There are thousands more parents and single young men and women like me in this state. People who are working hard, and willing to work hard, people who do not want to rely on a hand out, who only want a hand up, to be able to work and pull themselves up and be independent and responsible. We are the ones who would be helped by the expanded Medicaid. Not only is it good for our future, it’s good for the future of this state. Medicaid would let these thousands of people continue to work, continue to better themselves, which would in turn let them continue to buy more goods and services in this state. This would in turn boost Florida’s economy and business. It would increase tourism as the service people who work in the tourism industry won’t be sick and thus won’t make our visitors sick.
If you continue to block this expansion, these funds which would help thousands in this state you will only prove that you care NOTHING about the people you are supposed to serve. You are not a CEO, you are not our Boss. You are a civil servant. You are supposed to care more about the people of this state than you do about your wealthy donors. You make me ashamed to call myself a Floridian.
Please, do what is right for Florida. And keep in mind, those of us you are hurting VOTE. Our parents, our children VOTE. My son will be old enough to Vote during YOUR next election. So will his friends. My parents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles and grandparents all live in this state and they vote as well. So do the families of the thousands of others who are or have been in my situation. Florida unemployment is declining in a large part due to jobs like the ones I used to hold. They may not pay much, they may not offer insurance, but they are jobs. We are willing to work. You are the one holding us back. We won’t forget that.
If you live in Florida, send your own email, please... You can send one
here . We need to vote him out in 2014, it's the only way to save our State and her people. In the meantime we have to try to minimize the damage he does the only way we can.