I started out feeling outraged. Just completely outraged. A federal commission is recommending that Medicare funding be reduced to hospitals, and frozen in nursing homes and home care agencies next year, reported the New York Times. My family sees first hand on a daily basis how critical these services are, and how under-funded. My mother is a nurse in a nursing home, my dad is a psychiatric nurse working with the Visiting Nurses' Association (home care agency) and my last job was with the disabled. Medicare and Medicaid are penny-pinching already. For example, one of my boys had scoliosis and a form of gigantism so that he was very tall with bird-like bones. He had to wear what is called a body jacket to offer his spine and torso enough support to walk upright. These body jackets are made of specially molded hard plastic, cushioned on the inside so as not to chafe. They wrap around the torso and are secured with velcro straps on the side. Because they have to be fitted specially, they are not cheap. But it is critical that they fit correctly for the safety, comfort and well-being of the wearer. This client of mine was only in his teens and still growing. He was almost skeletally thin, stretched in length the way he was. He soon outgrew the body jacket he had, and needed a new one. The old no longer fit around him. Know what we were told? Put him on a diet and make it fit, because they weren't going to buy him a new one for another two years! In the end, it took one year but we got it.
These things are happening everywhere around us. Our elderly are having to wait or do without altogether because the funds are low and rationed out. Same thing for those who are physically or mentally disabled. Many of my father's patients have psychiatric disorders, and the red tape they have to go through now is insane. How much worse will it be if funding is cut further?
Are the evangelicals- backers of this administration- trying to prove Darwin's theory: Survival of the fittest? Are we culling the herds? Because between the plans for Social Security and now Medicare, it kind of seems that way.
Or is it (as I rather suspect) the soulless undead greedy money-grubbers? They know who they are.
I started this post by saying that I was outraged, past tense. I'm still angry, however I managed to find a little good in the world to balance the emotional budget, so to speak. Some of you may have read about the mother holding an auction on ebay to raise money for a costly biopsy that her 9-year-old son needed. Her son is getting his biopsy. Free! Just when all hope is gone, it isn't.