BOB HERBERT: Young, Ill and Uninsured

[kevinmc]

Fourteen-year-old Devante Johnson deserved better. He was a sweet kid, an honor student and athlete who should be enjoying music and sports and skylarking with his friends at school. Instead he’s buried in Houston’s Paradise North Cemetery.

Devante died of kidney cancer in March. His mother, Tamika Scott, believes he would still be alive if bureaucrats in Texas hadn’t fouled up so badly that his health coverage was allowed to lapse and his cancer treatment had to be interrupted.

Ms. Scott, who has multiple sclerosis, understood the grave danger her son would be in if he were somehow to be left without the Medicaid coverage that paid for his chemotherapy, radiation and other treatment. She submitted the required paperwork to renew the coverage two months before the deadline.

“I was so anxious to get it processed,” she said, “so we wouldn’t have a lapse of coverage.”

In Texas, as in many other states, there is a concerted effort to undermine programs that bring government-sponsored health care to poor and working-class children. It is not an environment in which bureaucrats are encouraged to be helpful, not even when lives are at stake.......

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/bob-herbert-young-ill-and-uninsured.html

[ninkasi]

1. How tragic

It's outrageous that vile, hateful men like Jerry Falwell could preach endlessly about saving the lives of "innocent babies", while saying not a word about helping those already born. What shameless hypocrisy by men like him, and his deranged followers. If they truly cared about the sanctity of life, every citizen would receive government paid for health care, especially the most vulnerable of them.

[MasonJar]

2. This is despicable. It is also no doubt purposeful. What a nation this has become.

Thanks go to you, W, for your absolute insensitivity to humanity. You are one of a kind!

[FloridaJudy]

3. So much for Shrub's "Culture of Life"

Every time I hear that bloody oxymoron "compassionate conservatism" I want to scream. Children all over the world are paying the price for this administration's follies.

K&R