This page was last updated on July 3, 2013.
Stop dragging feet; Jan Carpenter; Beaver County Times; June 30, 2013.
A previous Carpenter letter was “We all deserve better.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“State Sen. Elder Vogel and Reps. Jim Marshall and Jim Christiana need to stop dragging their feet and start supporting Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania. The reasons are clear and the numbers are staggering.”
[RWC] You’ll find Ms. Carpenter doesn’t divulge the source of her “numbers.”
Here’s the PA DPW fact sheet on this topic.
“There are more than 12,000 working people in Beaver County, our family, friends and neighbors, who would finally have health insurance. They would no longer have to go to work with the fear of getting sick or being injured. They won’t have to choose between not going to the doctor or using the emergency room and running up staggering bills that often falls on the rest of us.”
[RWC] 12,000 is about 7% of Beaver County’s population.
How does medical insurance keep a person from “getting sick or being injured?”
When you read the next paragraph, remember “running up staggering bills that often falls on the rest of us.”
“It’s time for change. Vogel, Marshall and Christiana need to do the right thing and allow the federal government to pay 100 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid for three years and 90 percent after that. They need to support the creation of 40,000 good-paying, family-sustaining jobs and adding billions of dollars into the state’s economy. And they need to protect our hospitals, which will struggle and some may close without billions in funding for uncompensated care.”
[RWC] Excluding the current money-printing, from where does Ms. Carpenter think the money to “allow the federal government to pay 100 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid for three years and 90 percent after that” comes? Won’t paying for Medicaid expansion (just like current Medicaid) “fall on the rest of us,” at least those of us who pay taxes? In her previous letter, Ms. Carpenter wanted to increase Pennsylvania tax rates.
I don’t know what the “creation of 40,000 good-paying, family-sustaining jobs …” comment is about. Is Ms. Carpenter claiming Medicaid expansion will generate 40,000 new jobs?
“Our local elected leaders must seize this opportunity. There are 12,000 people in Beaver County whose lives are depending on them.”
[RWC] “12,000 people in Beaver County” will die without more taxpayer-funded medical insurance? Why?
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