Revenge of The Sith

Please note: From now on I’m going to use the term “sith lord” to represent whenever one of our idiot leaders takes away from the poor and gives to the rich and becomes sort of an anti Robin Hood. Let me introduce our first sith lord.

When Missourians stupidly elected Matt Blunt, little did they know they unleashed a sith lord on the state. When Matt Blunt was elect governor of Missouri, the first thing he did was to strip poor families of healthcare. With the same pen, he then awarded millions in tax breaks to businesses. Like most sith lord Republicans, Matt Blunt is an ambassador for big business and, likewise, unsympathetic toward anyone else. The hardest hit by these Blunt cutbacks were handicapped children, the elderly, and the working poor.

So it was no surprise when a recent study found out that in Missouri, uninsured adults were more than four times more likely to go without medical care when they needed it, compared with those who have insurance. Preventative care is non existent for these uninsured, hard-working families. So when they get sick it is usually something serious and expensive.

It was also no surprise when the same study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a private health policy foundation in New York; found that 41 percent of adults earning $20,000 to $40,000 were uninsured in 2005. That's a jump from 28 percent lacking coverage in 2001. Of the estimated 48 million adults’ uninsured at some time in the past year, 67 percent were in families where at least one person was working full time. One in five adults under age 65 said they were paying off debt from medical bills. More than 1.3 million adults in the Midwest from ages 50 to 64 are uninsured.

In all, two studies were conducted. One found that increasing numbers of working people earning moderate to middle-class incomes are joining the ranks of the uninsured. A second found that a significant percentage of people without health insurance in the past year were unable to get medical care.

More statistics from the Commonwealth Fund survey (these statistics include the entire country):

• Two of five Americans with incomes from $20,000 to $40,000 a year (41 percent) were uninsured for at least part of the past year.

• More than half of adults earning under $20,000 a year (53 percent) spent time uninsured in the past year.

• Of the estimated 48 million adults who spent any time uninsured in the past year, 67 percent were in families in which at least one person was working full time.

• More than half of uninsured adults (51 percent) reported medical debt or problems with medical bills. Of those, nearly half (49 percent) used up all their savings to pay their medical bills. Two of five were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat or rent because of their medical debt.

• 59 percent of uninsured adults who had a chronic illness, such as diabetes or asthma, did not fill a prescription or skipped their medications because they could not afford them.

• More than a third of uninsured adults (35 percent) who had a chronic condition went to an emergency room or stayed overnight in the hospital in the past year because of their condition - about two times the rate of people with chronic conditions who had insurance all year.

Remember these are working people. They get up everyday and go to work but they get no healthcare so they skip life saving medications and when they do get sick, end up in hospital emergency rooms. If these families own homes they won’t have them long because the first illness will probably take everything they own.

Matt Blunt is not responsible for creating this mess but he compounded the problem by further adding to these statistics. Let’s all remember this sith lord at election time.