Source: Smirking Chimp
Florida Governor Rick Scott is now officially a killer, and Charlene Dill is one of his victims.
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Is Rick Scott Guilty of Murder? |
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Florida Governor Rick Scott is now officially a killer, and Charlene Dill is one of his victims.
Charlene Dill was a hardworking Florida woman, who moved down to Florida when she was just 18 years old.
To help make ends meet, Charlene worked at various fast food restaurants, at Disney World, and even cleaned houses and babysat.
As the years went by, Charlene found herself, as a single mother, struggling to raise three children.
Last year, Charlene made just $11,000 cleaning houses and babysitting. She used that money to help put food on the table for her children, and to put a roof over their heads.
Then Charlene discovered she had a severe heart problems that needed to be managed. And she couldn't afford to get it treated right, because Charlene didn't have health insurance.
Charlene fell into what's called the "Red State Doughnut Hole," created by Republican lawmakers like Rick Scott. It says that if you make over $5,400 and less than $11,400, you get no health insurance.
Below the $5,400, Charlene would have qualified for Florida's pretty pathetic Medicaid program. Over $11,400, she would have qualified for free health insurance under Obamacare because of the subsidies for low-income people. But because she only earned $11,000, she made too little to qualify for Obamacare, but too much to qualify for Florida Medicaid.
This isn't, of course, how the Obamacare law was written.
But this giant Swiss Cheese hole was drilled into Obamacare by John Roberts, when the Supreme Court said that states could refuse to take federal money to pay to cover people who don't earn enough to qualify for insurance subsidies but make more than state Medicaid programs will cover.
It was into that hole that Charlene fell.
Twenty-three states which are either controlled by a Republican governor or a Republican legislature have refused to expand Medicaid coverage to their citizens under Obamacare.
This is pure politics, an effort to sabotage Obamacare by cutting the working poor out of the program.
Republicans are hoping that working poor people like Charlene will be so upset that they can't get Obamacare, and won't realize that it was the Republican governors who refused their eligibility, that they'll be angry with Obama and the Democrats and vote Republican in 2014 and 2016.
It's all about politics.
These states are literally playing politics with people's lives, and Charlene is one of the people they've now killed.
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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
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