CHARLENE DILL'S death is on Florida repiglican tea-bagger Gov rick scott. Charlene Dill did not have to die, but she was sentenced to death by the Florida state legislatures refusal to expand Medicaid. She is a victim of a repiglican / tea-bagger health care death panel. I just wonder if any of these people to took the deliberate steps to make sure Charlene Dill was not able to get Medicaid, health care, feel any guilt about her death? Does the Christian community in Florida, those who elected rick scott, feel any sorrow, any remorse? I just wonder.....
turkmen
Charlene Dill didn’t have to die. That's how this article from Orlando
Weekly starts about a young mother of three who died while selling
vacuums door to door. On that day, in order to make enough money to
survive, she made two last-minute appointments. At one of those
appointments, in Kissimmee, Charlene collapsed and died on a stranger’s
floor.
Dill, estranged from her husband, was raising three children aged 3, 7
and 9 by herself. Charlene was supposed to bring her three children
over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss
Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they
shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to
transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another
out, forming a safety net where there wasn’t one already.
Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it
unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took
medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall
within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that
allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of
the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to
everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand
Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the
federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid
program to include people like Dill and Woolrich – people who work, but
do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s
subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that
puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000
Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against
President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
Dill had been bumped off Medicaid because she was making too much money –
an estimated $9,000 a year – and had yet to be able to afford a
divorce, which might have bettered her chances.
According to the DCF website, parents are only eligible if
their income is less than or equal to 19 percent of the Federal Poverty
Level. The Federal Poverty Level for a household of four in 2014 is
$23,850. Charlene Dill would have missed that mark if she made more than
$4,531.50. Medicaid expansion would have raised that percentage of FPL
to 138 percent, or $32,913, and would also have included non-parents in a
household of just one that made less than $16,104.
Coincidentally, Kathleen Voss Woolrich found out she lost her Medicaid
benefits on April 2 after driving all the way from Conway to Kissimmee
to see a doctor that would accept Medicaid – on a day off from
canvassing for the ACA.
Charlene's best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich has spent the
better part of 2014 canvassing for the Service Employees International
Union and for Planned Parenthood in an effort to educate people about
Medicaid expansion and to enroll residents of poor neighborhoods into
the Affordable Care Act’s medical-care exchanges. During the course of
her work, she saw women with tumors that had yet to be treated, many
chronic conditions affecting people living in the gap, and sometimes she
found herself having to be the bearer of bad news. March 21 was her day
off. She was looking forward to getting away from the politics. “I was
off. Spring break was going to start for me and her kids,” she says.
“Going into election season, basically we have the spirit and the memory
and the mantra of Charlene Dill. We need to make sure that there are no
more Charlene Dills that are victims of this system,” says SEIU's
Monica Russo. “That’s our mandate. Charlene Dill goes on. Make sure that
her legacy is alive.”
Please read the full article on their website:
http://orlandoweekly.com/...
Update: Kossack
Eileen B provided a
link that was setup by her best friend Kathleen Voss Woolrich to pay for Charlene's funeral expenses last month.
And a picture of Charlene with her three beautiful kids:
Originally posted to turkmen on Wed Apr 09, 2014 at 04:38 PM EDT.
The perils of Florida’s refusal to expand Medicaid
Charlene Dill is one of an estimated 2,000 people who expected to face dire health issues due to lack of access to care
Charlene Dill didn’t have to die.
On
March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the
South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two
had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the
resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to
baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a
safety net where there wasn’t one already. They “hustled,” as Woolrich
describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they
could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down,
cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the
working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery
that has yet to reach many average people.
So on March 21, when
Dill never showed up with her three kids (who often came over to play
with her 9-year-old daughter, Zahra), Woolrich was surprised she didn’t
even get a phone call from Dill. She shot her a text message – something
along the lines of “Thanks for ditching me, LOL” – not knowing what had
actually happened. Dill, who was estranged from her husband and raising
three children aged 3, 7 and 9 by herself, had picked up yet another
odd job. She was selling vacuums on a commission basis for Rainbow
Vacuums. On that day, in order to make enough money to survive, she made
two last-minute appointments. At one of those appointments, in
Kissimmee, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor.
Dill’s
death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a
documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also
happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the
2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of
Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s
intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two
years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida,
which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period
of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill
and Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify
for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims
of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000
U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the
name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
Woolrich
has spent the better part of 2014 canvassing for the Service Employees
International Union and for Planned Parenthood in an effort to educate
people about Medicaid expansion and to enroll residents of poor
neighborhoods into the Affordable Care Act’s medical-care exchanges.
During the course of her work, she saw women with tumors that had yet to
be treated, many chronic conditions affecting people living in the gap,
and sometimes she found herself having to be the bearer of bad news.
March 21 was her day off. She was looking forward to getting away from
the politics. “I was off. Spring break was going to start for me and her
kids,” she says.
Woolrich was aware that Dill was trying to get refills on her
medication but not that she had become ill. Dill had been bumped off
Medicaid because she was making too much money – an estimated $9,000 a
year – and had yet to be able to afford a divorce, which might have
bettered her chances. A message to Woolrich from a distant relative
confirmed that Dill would not be showing up that Friday because she had
passed away, but even that might not have happened if Dill’s cell phone
hadn’t lit up while she lay prostrate on that Kissimmee floor. The
people to whom Dill was peddling vacuums noticed the phone and called
her relatives, says Woolrich, telling them, “There’s a girl lying on our
floor. We don’t know who she is.”
These are the people in the
coverage gap – the unknowns, the single mothers, the not-quite-retired –
the unnamed 750,000 Floridians who are suffering while legislators in
Tallahassee refuse to address the issue in this year’s legislative
session, which ends on May 2. The working poor – who used to be the
middle class – are on a crash course with disaster for no logical
reason. Charlene Dill, at the age of 32, didn’t have to die.
On
April 1, President Obama held a press conference to announce the
remarkable success of the Affordable Care Act, despite early indications
that the website hosting the federal health care exchange was going to
be an obstacle to signing up. Seven million people enrolled in the
program, surpassing the expectations of the Congressional Budget Office –
and those of most Republicans who oppose the program. In reality, more
than double that number have been positively affected by the ACA’s
enactment. Those who were automatically enrolled in Medicaid in the
states that accepted the federal government’s funding for the program –
100 percent for the first three years, then 90 percent for the fourth
year – are not even included in that number. Florida, it should be
noted, was second in the number of enrollees through March 31, even
without the Medicaid expansion.
In the Sunshine State, 440,000
people signed up on the health care exchange, while 125,000 were judged
to be eligible for Medicaid. Florida, with its retirees and low-wage
workers, is on the demand side of health care.
“We are No. 2, plus
we have a federal exchange,” SEIU state council president Monica Russo
says. “I find that quite a statement. Floridians need health care. I
think [Republicans] can campaign all they want against health care, but
at the end of the day, what are they going to do? Rip health care out of
their hands?”
The ACA issue has frustrated the Florida
Legislature and governor’s office since the inception of the plan.
Attorney General Pam Bondi – following in the footsteps of her
predecessor Bill McCollum – actively litigated against the
constitutionality of a health care “mandate” along with other Republican
states, before those complaints were silenced by that 2012 Supreme
Court ruling. Gov. Rick Scott came out in advance of last year’s
legislative session with tepid support for accepting Medicaid expansion
in light of his mother’s death and the fact that, as he said, nobody
should be without health care.
Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, attempted to support a
compromise within his party to accept the federal funds of $51 billion
via an ancillary system, but the more arch arguments in the State House –
via House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel – shut any
compromise down.
Now the governor refuses to even address the issue. It is an election year, after all.
Republicans
have indicated that they do not intend to address Medicaid expansion
during this year’s session, and no hearings have been scheduled, but
that hasn’t stopped advocates from trying to press the issue, if only in
remembrance of Dill. Just one week after her death, Woolrich traveled
to Tallahassee with a coalition of groups – including SEIU, teachers and
health care workers – to present their case in the Capitol rotunda.
“She
worked really hard to provide for her kids,” Woolrich said from the
lectern, surrounded by supporters holding up Dill’s picture. “She did
baby-sitting, cleaned houses, collected cans for recycling and took them
to recycling centers and got money for it, and sold vacuum cleaners.
Whatever it took. But Charlene had health problems. She had pulmonary
stenosis, sepsis from tooth decay, fibromyalgia and a lot of other
health issues from these conditions. When she separated from her husband
in 2009, that was last time she had reliable health insurance.”
Woolrich
actually walked Dill through the process of the ACA online calculator
and they found that she was in the gap. As recently as last October,
Woolrich used online crowd-funding sources to help Dill get the
medication she needed. Her heart condition had complicated all three of
her pregnancies, and sometimes the hustle to survive wasn’t enough to
make life bearable.
“People like Charlene are dying,” Russo says.
“The thing is, the resources are there to pay for it. That’s what’s so
mind-boggling about this situation. The money is there; it’s on the
table.”
As a result, House Democrats – including local state Rep.
Joe Saunders, D-Orlando – are holding the expansion as a trump card in
advancing this year’s $75 billion budget proposal. On April 3, Saunders
released a statement justifying his no vote on the budget.
“Millions
of dollars in revenue were left on the table that could have been
generated by closing the online sales-tax loophole which has
overwhelming support from the business community, both parties and,
maybe most importantly, for a second year in a row we’ve left billions
of dollars out which would give over a million people access to health
care and create 60,000 jobs,” he said. “This budget does important
things for many people, but it is a plan that unnecessarily leaves too
many people out.”
And while there have been reports of House
Minority Leader Perry Thurston Jr., D-Fort Lauderdale, pressuring
Democrats to fall in a similar line, the budget has nonetheless received
measurable bipartisan support, mostly because of pork and election
optics. Despite appearances – like that cited by SEIU’s Russo, who
praised the minority leader’s hard-line stance, saying, “That’s
leadership. ‘You’re not going to have our votes’” – Thurston’s mandate
doesn’t amount to much.
I think there will probably be members in our caucus who think that
this budget does more and that they have some basis for voting for it,”
Thurston said last week, according to the News Service of Florida.
The
political pressure for Medicaid expansion reaches far higher than the
mahogany desks of Tallahassee, though. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson,
D-Florida, has been actively pursuing a compromise for Medicaid
expansion in Florida behind the scenes in Tallahassee.
“An idea is
to involve public hospitals, which serve many of the state’s low-income
or indigent patients, in providing some of their revenue in place of
state funding for Medicaid expansion,” he wrote in a statement.
“Tragically, the failure to expand Medicaid means that some people will
die earlier due to a lack of proper medical treatment,” he said via
email in response to questions for this story.
Congressman Alan
Grayson, who received significant criticism for his “Die Quickly”
placard, which he released in reaction to Republican obstruction of the
ACA, replied more specifically to the case.
“Charlene’s sad and
unnecessary death illustrates what I have said all along: For the 1
million of Floridians who cannot afford health care coverage, the
Republican health care plan is simply this: ‘Don’t get sick,’” Grayson
says. “If you do get sick, and if you cannot afford coverage, the GOP
has nothing for you but prayer. The Republicans have no answers, no
alternatives, no ideas, no safety nets, no sympathy, no empathy and no
compassion. Just these three words: ‘Don’t get sick.’ The GOP’s refusal
to expand Medicaid, at no cost to Florida, has put the GOP’s appalling
disregard for human life on full display. As far as they’re concerned,
if you’re not a fetus, you’re on your own. The Republicans would
literally rather watch people like Charlene die than give them the care
that they need to stay healthy and alive. It’s disgusting and sadistic.”
Grayson
entered Woolrich’s account of Dill’s death – which she published online
– into the Congressional Record, even having a representative deliver
the document at Dill’s funeral, which was, again, crowd-funded by
Woolrich on
GoFundMe.com. Woolrich raised $4,000 in less than a week to pay for the funeral.
“I
memorialized Charlene’s life and death in the Congressional Record,
because the Republicans want to pretend that none of this is happening.
That Charlene didn’t die as a result of their callous neglect – that no
Floridians will die as a result of their willful refusal to expand
Medicaid at no cost,” Grayson says. “But I’m not going to let them
forget. I’m not going to let them pretend. This is not a game; this is
very real. This is life and death.”
The politics of the issue, and of Dill’s death, don’t necessarily bleed into the practicalities of Medicaid.
“As
you know, and just to clarify, as an executive state agency, we
administer directives from the governor’s office,” regional managing
director for the Department of Children and Families for Central Florida
Bill D’Aiuto says. “I think, as you know, the Legislature decided not
to expand Medicaid.”
DCF actually handles the eligibility side of the Medicaid conundrum
in Florida, while the Agency for Health Care Administration handles the
distribution of benefits. D’Aiuto, in typical administrative fashion,
has no real opinion on the prospect of expanding the Medicaid plan and
can only speculate as to whether the state office discussed what costs
that might bring to the agency (currently suffering in public relations
for various foster care travesties). But the Medicaid eligibility issue
is difficult to pin down, beyond the fact that, at least currently, only
mothers with kids are welcome into the system.
According to the
DCF website, parents are only eligible if their income is less than or
equal to 19 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. The Federal Poverty
Level for a household of four in 2014 is $23,850. Charlene Dill would
have missed that mark if she made more than $4,531.50. Medicaid
expansion would have raised that percentage of FPL to 138 percent, or
$32,913, and would also have included non-parents in a household of just
one that made less than $16,104.
Coincidentally, Kathleen Voss
Woolrich found out she lost her Medicaid benefits on April 2 after
driving all the way from Conway to Kissimmee to see a doctor that would
accept Medicaid – again, on a day off from canvassing for the ACA. She
was bumped into the “Share of Cost” program via DCF.
The program
operates with a deductible of sorts – you are given a monthly
share-of-cost dollar figure that’s tabulated based on your income. If
your medical needs for the month meet or exceed that figure, Medicaid
then kicks in and pays the bill. If not, you pay your own bills. From
the website: “Your share of cost is $800. You go to the hospital on May
10 and send us the bill for $1,000. You have met the share of cost and
are Medicaid eligible from May 10 through May 31. Medicaid will pay the
$1,000 medical bill. This is only an example.”
D’Aiuto gives a
similar example and says that there is no reimbursement should you
accidentally pay your bill. And in order for Medicaid benefits to kick
in, you have to spend a lot of money (or at least owe a lot of money)
before you have any coverage at all. Woolrich says her doctor – who
charged her for her visit and gave her the required prescriptions for
the autoimmune disorder for which she is often hospitalized;
prescriptions she couldn’t afford to fill until she met her $491 share
of cost – asked, “Why don’t you just go to the emergency room?”
Which
is exactly why people like the SEIU’s Monica Russo, along with most
medical-care associations and interests who are busy covering the unpaid
hospital costs of the indigent and poor, are adamant about pursuing
expansion for the Medicaid program. Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius has made it clear to the Legislature and the governor
that there is still time to opt in, should they be so compelled. And, in
an election year, they just might.
“Going into election season,
basically we have the spirit and the memory and the mantra of Charlene
Dill. We need to make sure that there are no more Charlene Dills that
are victims of this system,” Russo says. “That’s our mandate. Charlene
Dill goes on. Make sure that her legacy is alive.”
http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144
