A new study estimates that 45,000 deaths a year can be linked to the absence of ins.

And just like I thought....


...It's a very sad story about the horrors of poverty, American-style. But you have to do some hard reading between the lines to perceive those horrors as they really are. In conformity to the most ancient canons of liberal advocacy journalism, reporter Mary Otto has ignored the real story - a shocking account of parental incompetence and neglect - to advance an agenda.
You have to scroll more than halfway down into the story to arrive at these details:

The Driver children have never received routine dental attention, said their mother, Alyce Driver.
​

But doesn't Medicaid cover dental care?

The children's Medicaid coverage had temporarily lapsed at the time Deamonte was hospitalized.
​

Wait a minute: how does Medicaid "lapse"? Maryland's Medicaid program covers children under 19 whose parents earn up to 200% of the federal poverty level : $33,000 for a family of 3. If Driver earned more than $33,000 from her "bakery, construction, and home healthcare jobs," you would think she might be able to afford a visit to the dentist for an ailing child. Or did her coverage "lapse" for some other reason? What was it?
To find that answer, you have to wait till the very end of the story. Driver ends up in a homeless shelter.

She suspects that the paperwork to confirm their [Medicaid] eligibility was mailed to the shelter in Adelphi, where they no longer live.
​

In which case, would it not have been truer to add one more "if" clause to the opening above: "If only his mother had not been so utterly neglectful as not to take one single solitary personal step to ensure that her Medicaid coverage continued when she changed addresses?"
But wait, it's not Ms Driver's fault!

And even with Medicaid's promise of dental care, the problem, she said, was finding it.
​

It took me three clicks at 1800Dentist.com to find a dentist office in north Washington, convenient to Prince George's county, that had an appointment available for a Medicaid patient this very morning.
This next passage speaks for itself I think:

When Deamonte got sick, his mother had not realized that his tooth had been bothering him. Instead, she was focusing on his younger brother, 10-year-old DaShawn, who "complains about his teeth all the time," she said.

DaShawn saw a dentist a couple of years ago, but the dentist discontinued the treatments, she said, after the boy squirmed too much in the chair.

​

Now this:

By September, several of DaShawn's teeth had become abscessed. Driver began making calls about the boy's coverage but grew frustrated.
​

Did this frustration impel her to more frantic efforts to help her sons? Not at all. She turned the whole problem over to

Laurie Norris, a lawyer for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center who tried to help the Driver family
​

- and who also emerges as the principal source for Mary Otto's wave-the-bloody-shirt story.
Norris secured the Drivers some help, but seems not to have brought much urgency to Deamonte's care.

Norris and her staff also ran into barriers: They said they made more than two dozen calls before reaching an official at the Driver family's Medicaid provider and a state supervising nurse who helped them find a dentist.​

Why couldn't they find a dentist on their own?

On Oct. 5, DaShawn saw Arthur Fridley, who cleaned the boy's teeth, took an X-ray and referred him to an oral surgeon. But the surgeon could not see him until Nov. 21, and that would be only for a consultation.​

Driver said she learned that DaShawn would need six teeth extracted and made an appointment for the earliest date available: Jan. 16.​

But she had to cancel after learning Jan. 8 that the children had lost their Medicaid coverage a month earlier. ​

In other words, the lawyer who is supposedly urgently seeking care for an ill boy has likewise made no effort over the four months between September 2006 and January 2007 to determine whether the family had in fact sustained their Medicaid coverage - or to get it reinstated. Instead, Ms Driver cancelled her appointment and then ... did nothing.

It was on Jan. 11 that Deamonte came home from school complaining of a headache. At Southern Maryland Hospital Center, his mother said, he got medicine for a headache, sinusitis and a dental abscess. But the next day, he was much sicker.
​

Eventually, he was rushed to Children's Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.
​

Now look: I'm not going to deny that there may well be much wrong with health coverage for America' poor. Obviously there is. And some of the steps mentioned at the end of the article, including expansion of dental service at state health clinics, may well be useful and cost-effective measures. Maryland could pay for a lot of routine care with the quarter-million dollars it spent at the end to save Deamonte Driver's life.
But no government program on earth can protect children's health from a custodial parent who refuses to bestir herself in any way to help them, no matter how obviously sick they are. And no responsible journalist should allow herself to be manipulated by welfare-industry advocates into minimizing or excusing this truth in her reporting.
Deamonte Driver was a victim of parental neglect, not the hard-heartedness of the Medicaid program. And the really tough question for the guardians of the poor is: How on earth do we insure against that?


I figured since you posted your entire article, I could post up an entire rebuttal...


http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjg2NzZjY2NiMDhkNGU1ZTI0ODllN2VmMzJmNWMzZmQ=


Oh yeah, and you're still a liar.

 

Bro. Curtis

I would answer but there is no use in continung to cast pears ..............

When you begin to show that you are beginning to understand Christ's teachings we can discuss. I hope God shows you more understanding and mercy than you show others.

Until then .... goodbye.

 

CBT, really good rebuttal: When the rest of the story comes out, tell people they just don't care about others.

You don't care about him either. He's just a political talking point to you.

 

Yeah, that's it. When yer lie is completely eviscerated, throw Christ's name around.

The truth is you have no answer. And we all know it.

You are completely classless. Shame on you. And be sure that I will fight, whether or not you choose to respond.

 

The evil one never gives up. Read of Christ and follow him. Stop following secular thought and stop hating people. I pray that someday you begin to understand and follow the teaching of Christ on how we are to teat others.

 

:laugh: Sorry CTB old friend, but this typo almost made me spew cherry limeade out of my nose. :thumbsup:

 

I see you still have no rebuttal to the article I posted. And I thought you said good-bye to me.

And you have called me a bigot, C.T.B., and refused to back it up. Now you accuse me of hate. This is ridiculous. I do not buy your bogus story, and stand by my previous statement that this is a case of parental neglect, and the article I posted backs it up quite nicely. Where is the secular thought in that ? Where does Christ tell us to spin a story to support a socialist cause and stomp your feet and call people hateful who don't buy it ?

Yes, the rules say I cannot call you a liar, but you feel fine in calling me a bigot. At least I back up my accusation without throwing our savior's name around. You have a despicable debate tactic of not being able to back up your posts, and calling everyone who disagrees with you unChrist-like.

 

He also told me he wasn't casting pears, I hope not. They could break a window.

 

Look at it this way: 45 thousand people went to meet Jesus.

 

Of course we care.

However, HR3200 (or into whatever it has morphed) is probably not the answer CBT.

Perhaps 45,000 lives will be saved but what is the over-all cost of life in terms of collateral damage?

HR3200 may well be a re-distribution of death as well as wealth when it is finally enacted and the meat is put on the skeleton.

The old bill, which we were allowed to read, is repleat with phrases similar to "to be determined at a later time", "to be decided by the Task Force Council", "to be chosen by the Board Director"

45,000 saved at the expense of how many allowed to fend for themselves in a hospice or in end-of-life home care?

The administration has committed to a 500 billion dollar cut to medicare as part of the Health Care Bill. Supposedly this cut will recoop itself because of the so-called "reforms" of the other parts of the Bill.

In reality this recoop will probably be due to denial of elderly end-of-life patients the treatment necssary to extend their lives.

After all, they were young and/or healthy once, now they must give way for someone of a "greater social investment" (though they themselves paid into the system all their life).

Is this a change we can believe in?

OK, as Christians we have a hope that the world does not have.
However, we still want true equity and responsible stewardship for ourselves and others.

These individual testimonials e.g. "tooth infections", though they may be true, are still IMO propaganda tools CBT.

The HR3200 eugenics bill is not the answer.

My opinion, of course.

HankD

 

Bro. Curtis? How many times do I have to tell you not to confuse the Commies with the facts?:laugh: They don't care. They just give the impression they do!:tongue3:

 

I must be reading the wrong rule list. I do not see the rule against calling people "liars". If the "show grace" rule applies to this, then certainly the "bigot" word must also be included. And the words "hateful", and "evil" as well.

 

Where did this happen? Kentucky has KCHIP which will pay for this, even if both parents are employeed, but can't afford healthcare coverage. How did this happen to a little child in an already welfare state?

KCHIP is health & dental insurance for Ky. families' children even when the household income of a family of four equals 2442.00 monthly.

How did this happen? There has to be a story as to why the parents failed to check with their state Human and Social services local offices. How? WHY?

These programs are already in position, if families do not take advantage of them then we are just suppose to let the FED take over? KCHIP is already a public option.

I would like to know the HOW and WHY this child was permitted to die with an abscessed tooth when there are comparable programs to KY's KCHIP.

bro. Dallas

 

Ok, I backed up a page and read the rest of the story. My younger brother had a similar incident in the 1970's. Stayed in hospital here in Glasgow for nearly two weeks, couldn't hold anything on his stomach, doctors could find nothing wrong with him, we had no insurance of any kind that I know of, we were poor, but my dad worked full-time all the time and worked after work at other jobs and contract work to pay our bills...but that is the bad old days when people thought they should pay their way in the world I guess...anyway, one afternoon a dentist was in the hospital visiting someone he began talking to dad. He asked permission to look at my brother. Dad told him to go ahead. This was on Sunday evening...after looking at my brother the dentist told dad to bring him to his home and though they would have to hold him he would pull the abcessed tooth, he did and my brother's condition immediately began improving.

I have no idea how payment arrangements were made, but I know the compassion of this doctor in bringing my brother (our entire family went as there were no child/day care facilities) into his home was a pretty awesome statement about the calling into the medical profession...do we still have that availability?? or has liability (rather sueability become so rewarding that health care costs are now exuberant?)


:tonofbricks:
bro. Dallas Eaton,

 

Good question.

Could be either parental neglect or a biased "study".

Of course, I believe this is a useless and intentionally misleading study in the first place. Your question underscores the intent of the researchers.