When Ordinary Mistakes Can Kill…

 

Have you been paying attention this week?

People are getting shot all over the country, for no reason. To recap, an African American teenager in Kansas City went to the wrong house to collect his younger brothers, rang the bell and the elderly resident of the home shot through the door and wounded him. The 16-year-old survived the gunshots to his head and arm, but has residual traumatic brain damage. The homeowner was an elderly man who was described as paranoid and an avid Fox TV viewer who believed that Black people were roaming the streets to kill whites.

Some cheerleaders in Elgin, Texas, walked to a car that looked like theirs in a grocery store parking lot and opened the door. An occupant of the car shot two of them; it was the wrong car. One girl has only one lung and is still suffering from surgery to repair multiple internal organ damage, while the other was not seriously injured.

A group of young people were looking for a friend’s home in a remote area of upstate New York to go to a party. They pulled into a driveway and realized this was the wrong house. As the driver turned around to leave, the resident of the home came outside and fired at the car. He shot and killed one woman in the car. She was twenty years old.

In Gaston County, North Carolina, a six-year-old girl and her father were playing with a ball in their yard, when it rolled into a neighbor’s yard. An argument followed between the homeowner and the child's parents and he shot them. Some wounds, including that of the child and mother, were minor, but the father remains hospitalized with major injuries. Authorities later found the suspect in Florida.

Gunmen shot eight people, including a twelve-year-old girl, in drive-by shootings Saturday evening in Washington, DC.

Outsiders attacked a sweet sixteen party in Dadeville, Alabama, and left four dead and thirty-two injured. One of the dead was the brother of the birthday girl. Six people, including four teenagers, have been . To date, there has been no obvious connection to the partygoers released.arrested

Nine teenagers were wounded, none seriously, in a shooting at a post-prom party in Jasper County, Texas. Authorities have not yet arrested any suspects.

I noted above just a few instances in recent days where young people and others were shot while living their ordinary lives and doing ordinary things. If these events do not disturb you, you must be living in an alternative reality. Fear mongers, who also tout this alternative reality where "others" are the enemy, spawned this gun shooter mentality. Those politicians who follow the NRA mantra of 'a good guy with a gun will keep order' have encouraged this gun violence. Politicians who have no conscience and push for open-carry gun policies without registration or background checks promote this violence.

Our children are getting killed. They are getting shot and killed in their schools, on their playgrounds, in movie theaters, and in grocery stores. They are getting killed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But these places are usually the right place for them to be, at school, at church, at home, or going to a shopping center. This is what ordinary Americans do every day. They should be able to do these things without fear.

This gun violence must stop. Each of us must condemn the lying by right-wing politicians and broadcasters yelling about crime and frightening Americans into thinking that their lives are no longer safe. There is seldom a reason for regular people to carry a gun to answer a doorbell or go to the nearby store. Your home may be your castle, but it needs to not be a fortress.

According to an article in the Washington Post by Francis Wilkinson:

“The lesson that gun culture warriors want American parents to learn is simple: If you want your kids to grow to maturity, make sure they and their friends never make innocent mistakes. It's a good rule to live by……

The village that raised these shooters, and nurtured them to kill, is where we live. It's Fox News spreading lies and fear day and night. It's the local television news station broadcasting nothing but stories of violent crime and puppy adoptions, devoid of context or complexity. It's the National Rifle Association telling frightened White men that nothing can save them but a "tactical" arsenal. It's the Republican Party passing laws to put more guns on the street, in bars, in cars, in churches, in parks, in schools, in homes and in the hands of the depraved and deranged, and then pretending that gun violence is a product of a "woke" prosecutor in Philadelphia or San Francisco. It's the conservative Supreme Court justices who have manufactured history and law to match the dystopian fantasies of their political allies. It's a gun culture that makes heroes of killers like Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman.

 

It takes a village to do all this. And a morally shattered, nihilistic movement that feeds off the fear that it generates. As long as we continue to empower that movement in government and law, we will remain in thrall to its pathology. Ringing the wrong doorbell, entering the wrong driveway, opening the wrong door will be invitations to violence and death.”

 

The New York Times noted in an article titled-In a nation armed to the teeth, these tiny missteps led to tragedy:

“The maintenance man in North Carolina had just arrived to fix damage from a leak. The teenager in Georgia was only looking for his girlfriend's apartment. The cheerleader in Texas simply wanted to find her car in a dark parking lot after practice.

Each of them accidentally went to the wrong address or opened the wrong door — and each was shot. They had made innocent mistakes that became examples of the kind of deadly errors that can occur in a country bristling with guns, anger and paranoia, and where most states have empowered gun owners with new self-defense laws.

Each one of these incidents resulted from unique events. But activists and researchers say they stem from a convergence of bigger factors — increased fear of crime and an attendant surge in gun ownership, increasingly extreme political messaging on firearms, fear-mongering in the media, and marketing campaigns by the gun industry that portray the suburban front door as a fortified barrier against a violent world.

More than 30 states also have "stand your ground" laws. Some have recently strengthened their "castle doctrine" laws, making it more difficult to prosecute homeowners who claim self-defense in a shooting.

This article from a NY Times survey demonstrates how this constant exposure to gun violence has changed us as a nation:

"I check for escape routes everywhere I go”

I have two small kids. One is in school. What worries me the most is gun violence happening at her school. To cope with those thoughts and feelings, I talk with my family, cry sometimes and just try to move on with my day.”

"I used to pray that my sons — who are young Black men — are healthy and happy. I don't do that anymore. Now I pray only for safety for my sons, my family, and myself. I can only pray they come home at night and are not victims of a shooter at the grocery store, in their school classroom, driving to the movies, sitting in the car at the stoplight."

Is this truly the world that you want for your family, for our nation? One where the ever-present display and use of guns are lessening our safety?

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In other news this week, The Fox News Corporation and Dominion Voting Systems settled their lawsuit for $787,500,000, avoiding an impending brutal court battle. NPR described the court case:

Even in settling and sidestepping an adverse verdict, Fox's reputation among its peers has already been shattered.

What Dominion uncovered in the investigative part of the suit — what's called discovery — revealed a world grounded in cynicism and hostility. From the top down, the Murdochs and Fox created a network defined by a relentless pursuit of ratings that placed profit above politics and partisan advantage above any sense of journalistic obligation. The public's right to know the truth rarely earned a hearing.

Primetime stars Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity privately trashed the people who lied about Dominion on their network's airwaves and yet also trashed the reporters who sought to hold them accountable for those lies.

Fox founder Rupert Murdoch — who, under oath, called himself a newsman at heart — advocated going slow in confronting Fox's pro-Trump viewers with unwelcome news in order to protect the franchise. Hannity didn't believe "for one second" the lies being peddled by Trump and on Fox itself, even though, as Murdoch put it, the star endorsed them "a bit."

Host Maria Bartiromo put on an attorney spinning pro-Trump conspiracy theories and insinuating, without evidence, fraud by Dominion on the basis of a memo whose author, a Minnesota artist, called her allegations "pretty wackadoodle."

 

So, in the end, Fox admitted it made baseless statements about Dominion, but never actually said that it lied. They did not admit they lied to keep their audience from defecting to Newsmax when their analysts correctly called Arizona for Biden. They did not apologize to their viewers for not calling out the lies about the election from the former president. Emails, where various hosts stated their disdain for DJT, have not even now, kept him off their air. The network viewers were treated to a sanitized description of the lawsuit, the first of many in this area. Have they learned their lesson? Probably not.

 

Despite this week of accidental killings, have they decreased the fear-mongering mentioned above? Not from what I can find-I refuse to watch this network. So, even after paying out three-quarters of a billion dollars for this issue, expect little to change.

 

“Til next week-Peace!

Legal Issues Fill the Horizon

Please note that my spell/phrase check updated and would not allow me to make changes tonight and I am too tired to play with this any longer. I think that you will  understand what I am trying to say.

Judges and lawyers are much in the news these days. Trials, court hearings, appeals, and rulings seem to dominate the news recently.

Last week we saw a 21-year-old airman in court charged with violations of the espionage act for taking, keeping, and disseminating classified documents he worked with in his job as a cyber security technician for the Air National Guard. He copied or photographed these documents and uploaded them to a group he managed on an internet site called Discord. His group was comprised of young men mostly like him, people interested in weapons, and gaming and who were libertarian-leaning. He had been sharing these documents over several months before they appeared on a wider set of internet sites. His motivation, although unclear to most people, was said to be more aimed at showing and telling to brag about his access, rather than spying or espionage. He mistakenly thought that he could keep the documents contained in his small group of followers. Unfortunately for the Pentagon and our Allies, especially Ukraine, this was not the case and some of his followers leaked further; this situation has caused embarrassment for the US. The release also made clear that our intelligence services know a lot about the Russian military. Other spying efforts with some of our allies were also in the internet papers. I have no idea what makes young men with access to cyber secure data think that they somehow must download, copy or otherwise share this data to which they have been entrusted, but we have seen several instances, the most severe being Chelsea Manning and James Snowden in recent years.

Several media/print commentators discussed the situation and advised the military to find better ways to secure the data for the tech support staff. The younger staff are more tech-savvy, but at the same time can be less invested in the military mission, and unworried about the consequences of misusing the wide access they are given to the backgrounds of the data, such as daily briefings, that they work with. One suggestion was to initially encrypt the data so that while they could “see” the files, they could not read them but could move them around as necessary for wider use. One security expert noted that private industry has better security of their data than the Pentagon seems to have. They track who goes into files and can find those who try to access data they do not need to have. I know when I worked with HIPAA-protected patient data in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) files, every time I logged on and every medical record I accessed was tracked and tabbed. So, it would seem logical if, in the military, every click was tracked and the users knew that, there would be fewer people trying to see what they could explore.

Of course, the apologists for the former president are out in force, defending this young airman, for if his transgressions can be excused, then the actions of keeping certain secret and classified documents at Mar-a-Lago should also be excused. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who has defended him (who is angling for a VP spot on DJT’s ticket, it seems), appeared in an interview on 60 Minutes with Leslie Stahl. The interview has been widely panned in the media. Here is a quote from the media news publication Variety on the interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which aired on Sunday evening.

“In the interview, Greene asserted that Democrats are the “party of pedophiles,” saying, “They support grooming children… Even Joe Biden himself supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries.”

The Republican representative doubled down on her comments in a Tweet, writing, “I will always fight to protect kids!”

Greene, who was elected to a House seat representing Georgia in 2020, has been a primary subject of fervent criticism from Democratic figures for several years. During her campaign, she voiced support for a range of conspiracy theories promoted by the QAnon movement, which the FBI has deemed a domestic terror group. She has also promoted misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines.”

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called it “insane” that the program would air an interview with a figure like Greene. The Atlantic contributor Jemele Hill criticized the framing of the social media promotion as “s***” and stated that “60 Minutes” was “platforming stupid.” Many other journalists, political figures, and celebrities chimed in with their own criticism, responding to the tweet by “60 Minutes.”

Meanwhile, Congressman Jim Jordan is trying to sue prosecutor Alvin Bragg, demanding all of his pre-trial documents, disregarding the reality that he has no jurisdiction over state courts and the department of justice.

Jordan is bringing his House Justice committee to New York City to hold hearings on crime in that city that he claims the District Attorney is avoiding. Jordan has not done his homework as others have pointed out that the crime rate in his Congressional District in Ohio is higher than that in Manhattan. As reported by Yahoo News & Business Insider:

“An aide to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan would better serve the public by investigating homicides in his own backyard than road-tripping to New York City for a field hearing on violent crime.

Jordan, one of the many House Republicans outraged by Bragg's indictment of embattled former President Donald Trump, has decided to take the brewing fight to Bragg's home turf by interviewing unspecified witnesses at a just-announced hearing in Manhattan on April 17.

A Bragg spokesman called the pending congressional visit a political stunt, telling Bloomberg News that murders in New York City were three times lower than the murder rate in Columbus, Ohio.

"If Chairman Jordan truly cared about public safety, he could take a short drive to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, or Toledo, in his home state, instead of using taxpayer dollars to travel hundreds of miles of his way," the Bragg aide said.

Columbus, which has a population of approximately 907,000 people, closed out 2022 with 140 murders, according to The Columbus Dispatch, or 15.4 murders per 100,000 citizens.

New York City, which has a population of roughly 8.4 million, closed out 2022 with 433 murders, the Wall Street Journal reported, for a murder rate of 5.2 murders per 100,000 citizens.”

The former president described his appearance at the recent arraignment by claiming that the staff in the courthouse was in tears, telling him that this indictment was a miscarriage of justice. Video from that day shows police officers and others with poker faces, showing no emotions and certainly no tears. So, once again the master manipulator lies. We should not be surprised.

This last week DJT was again in a New York proceeding where depositions were being recorded in the civil fraud lawsuit against him and his company led by the New York State Attorney. Since one can be compromised by claiming the protections of the Fifth Amendment in a civil trial, he answered questions on this appearance, a departure from his position on the previous criminal trial about his company. He is also trying to delay the upcoming rape and defamation trial by writer E. Jean Carroll,but the judge did not agree. He protested that the publicity of the indictment would prejudice the jury.

The judge directly noted that it was his pronouncements and requests for defenders in the streets that brought the notoriety and denied his request. Delay, deflect, and deny are his usual tactics, but the judicial system is on to him and no longer willing to genuflect to his every request.

Another trial of note is to start next week. That is the long-awaited lawsuit by Dominion Systems against the Fox News Corporation and TV Network for malicious defamation and deliberate attempts to claim their voting machines flipped votes from the former president over to Joe Biden. Press Protections are pretty high n the US, but many observers think that the revelations in the subpoenaed Fox emails demonstrated that the truth did not sell and actually lost network viewers so there was a conscious decision to switch over to the “stop the steal” campaign being led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. They made many appearances on the network touting their bogus claims and citing instances (never proven) where Dominion machines switched votes. When Fox News reporters reported that these claims were never borne out, their bosses told them to get in line with the program that was touted by the opinion hosts. This is all already in the discovery documents. However, this past week it was learned that a multitude of documents from a former producer, including tape recordings of communications were not released in the discovery process. This led the Fox lawyers to be censured by the judge for not properly sharing requested documents. So the trial which was initially considered as one to be settled before the jury trial started, is going before a jury, it seems. There has been a one-day delay in the proceedings which were due to start tomorrow, so we shall soon see, one way or the other.

There is so much more in the news this week – but further exploration will have to be at a future date:

The expanded news about Justice Clarence Thomas and his hidden financial dealings. When will he be held to account?

The rulings and counter-rulings about the use of Mifepristone which is awaiting a mid-week decision by the Supreme Court. When will these extreme judges be curtailed and women’s rights be restored?

The stockpiling of abortion drug supplies by health departments in Blue states. When will this war on women end? Can they only be safe in Blue states? With the latest ruling in Florida for a six-week abortion ban, basically, the entire deep South holds no hope for women in this area.

The continued mass killings of Americans across this country by people with powerful weapons. Last week there were a total of 131 incidents, today there are 146.  As someone noted, more than one incident per day; more incidents than there are days in 2023. This has to stop.

The uproar in Tennessee over the expulsion of two young black legislators pushing for common-sense gun laws has started a movement. Let’s hope they succeed, now that they have been reappointed. Certainly, no one else has; we thought the same after Sandy Hook and after Parkland and…

“Til next week-Peace!

 

Expulsions, Abortions, and Indictments

 

What a week! The news stories tumbled into each other with a frenzied flow and ended with a Friday Night news dump that had the force of a thrown bomb. Let’s take a few moments to recap, as the newscasters say. The week started with the indictment-unprecedented-of a former president and also current candidate for president.

On Tuesday, the New York (Manhattan-based) District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, opened the indictment as specified by the recent Grand Jury. Instead of the widely expected misdemeanor charges, they charged all 34 counts as felonies, which carry heavier penalties. Details were not readily forthcoming but involved a combination of business and tax filings that were allegedly falsified to cover up relationships with porn stars and others and payments of hush money. Although the situation has been known for some time, the Department of Justice did not allow previous prosecutors to investigate the former president during his term in office. During the brief arraignment, the judge admonished the defense and the defendant against making inflammatory statements or encouraging others to take illegal actions. DJT already used his social media site to disparage the DA, his wife, the judge, and his daughter. Some thought that the judge refrained from imposing a gag order to prevent the defendant from using that to continue to raise money. One of his attorneys noted he raised ten million dollars from his appeals just by appearing in court. While I don’t know if this statement is true, he is probably the only defendant who could earn money this way! And, just as pointed out by the January 6^th committee, there is no guarantee that the money will go to pay attorneys and no structure to prevent the funds from going to him directly. Even so, he will tap into his MAGA faithful; those people who have far less money than he does, mostly.

He will soon also appear in another NY court in a civil defamation and rape case filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. I wonder if he will use that to raise money also? That man has no shame. Anyway, she claimed he raped her in a department store dressing room after a chance meeting in the women’s department over twenty years ago. She told friends about the incident but was afraid to go forward. When she mentioned it after he became president, he called her statements untrue and defamed her. The law allows presidential statements to be made without penalty, but he repeated the defamation after he left office, which permitted the court to allow the suit to move forward. The jury is being selected for this trial; this judge is allowing their names to be protected, to allow them to be free from harassment and worse by the MAGA crowd. He instituted this protection after DJT made remarks against the prosecutors and others in the felony case.

And, of course, we are all still awaiting the decision by the Fulton County Grand Jury in Georgia. Will they return felony charges of election tampering or racketeering against him and others for attempts he made to change the results of the 2020 election in that state?

Special prosecutor Jack Smith has demanded testimony from many former White House aides and has won court cases when they rejected his subpoenas. Even former VP Mike Pence, after he lost his argument that as a member of the Senate, even temporarily, this protected him from testifying, stated he will not appeal. The Washington Post recently reported that Mar-a-Lago staff testified to the DC Grand Jury that DJT directed the movement of the classified documents from the storage area to the residence. According to some legal authorities, this could lead to an additional charge of obstruction of justice. Stay tuned, folks! This could be the first time we have a presidential candidate under multiple indictments.

Moving on to expulsions!

In March, a former student killed six people in Nashville, Tennessee at a private Christian school shooting; three were nine-year-old students. For days, students in the state left their classrooms and demonstrated; some marched to the state capitol where the legislature was in session demanding common sense gun regulations with the banning of assault-type weapons. Three Democratic legislators who supported their efforts joined them. The Republican Party controls the Tennessee House by a super majority that refused to consider any gun measures. Leadership eventually demanded a vote to expel the three Democrats who, when they would not be recognized to speak, went to the front of the chamber, and spoke anyway; two used a bullhorn. The two young men, each only 27 years old, who spoke this way were Black; a white woman delegate-a former school teacher-joined them. A vote of the House expelled the Black delegates; they did not expel the white woman by a margin of one vote. (She claimed she was not expelled because she was white.) The speeches by the two men were eloquent. The defensive remarks by the Republicans stopped just short of calling them “boy”, but it was certainly implied. The delegates were charged with destroying the decorum of the body and not minding their manners, basically because they came to the front of the room without permission (which would not be given anyway.) Each represented major urban areas (mostly black cities) in the state; their expulsion means that those cities will have no voice in future legislation affecting them. The state is so gerrymandered that Black representation is minimal by design. The affected city governments have both said that they will just reappoint their same representatives, who can sit on an interim basis until the next election. It is unknown whether the body will seat them. Somehow lost in all of this brouhaha is the reason the students were marching in the first place; they are tired of school shootings and want their government to do something about this issue. With this legislature, it is doubtful that any legislation changing gun regulations might pass.

Meanwhile, further south in Florida, behind closed doors with NRA representatives attending, Governor DeSantis signed legislation allowing “permit-less concealed weapons carry”. Just what we need in this country! There have been 131 mass shootings since the beginning of the year in the US. (The referenced article, a week old, is already out of date.) The definition of a mass shooting is when there are four or more victims shot or killed in an incident; so those with only two wounded or killed are not counted here. Last year, at this time, the total was 113.

As expected, the very conservative judge in Amarillo, Texas, chosen by the anti-abortion movement, ruled against the use of the drug Mifepristone as approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). The group claimed that the FDA had not proven that the drug was safe, even though it has been in use in Europe even longer than in the US. He used convoluted reasoning about interstate sales of immoral or illicit products described in the nineteenth century. “The Comstock Act plainly forecloses mail-order abortion in the present,” wrote Kacsmaryk. He added, “Defendants cannot immunize the illegality of their actions by pointing to a small window in the past where those actions might have been legal.” Michelle Goldberg wrote about the abortion ruling as quoted above and the use of this 150-year-old law called The Comstock Law in the New York Times.

She states: “There is something head-spinning about how quickly Comstock’s spirit of punitive repression has settled on a country where, not long ago, social liberalism seemed largely triumphant, with the rapid acceptance of gay marriage, the growing visibility of trans people and over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.”

Shortly after this ruling, a judge in the state of Washington responded to a suit by several Democratic Attorney Generals which asked for the support of the FDA permission for Mifepristone and reinforced their positions. Judge Kacsmaryk placed his ruling on a week’s hold to allow a response by the Government. The Justice Department has already responded in opposition to his ruling. The issue will probably soon go to the Supreme Court.

This issue is more than abortions. It may challenge the authority for contraceptives and other medications also approved by the FDA. It may also challenge the authority of the various departments of the government to enforce any statutes. The Supreme Court altered the recent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to enforce clean water decisions with rule-making rolling back long-held regulations at the state level. This was just a start in this direction. The Court decided this on the Emergency Docket, which meant that the decision was not written and only the numbers (5-4) were given, with only the dissenters’ writing opinions. Some legal experts are concerned by the Court deciding to take fewer cases each year and usurping the regular pathways to the court by allowing so many decisions to be decided on the Emergency Docket without public discussion of the case or an explanation of decisions, especially when many of these issues are not urgent.

There is one hopeful note: in the election in Wisconsin for judges on the State Supreme Court a moderate judge was elected and will change the balance on the Court there, from Conservative to Liberal. Residents expected that this court can now overturn the Wisconsin abortion ban from the Nineteenth Century and revisit the gerrymandering that was so lopsided in Wisconsin under Republican control. The Justice won by ten points over her opponent, an avowed anti-abortion candidate.

Before I leave tonight, I must mention that an investigative report by ProPublica on Justice Thomas noted that for over twenty years, he has accepted gifts, trips on private jets, luxury yachts to tropical islands, and stays at private resorts from a Texas billionaire (Harlan Crow) he described as a friend. This friend sits on the boards of many conservative entities that sign on to Supreme Court cases. Donor Crow stated he did not directly have cases before the Court. However, he also provided the funding for the organization where Thomas’ wife worked and which paid her a six-figure salary. Thomas released a statement saying that he was told that trips with friends do not have to be reported. I am certain we will hear more about this matter.

“Til next week-Peace!

Medicaid Cancelations

 

Obamacare allowed for expanded Medicaid for all states. For the first few years, the government would cover most of the costs, but after a few years, the state's share would escalate modestly but would still be much less than before the act was in place. At that time, many leaders in Republican states rejected this plan and never expanded eligibility nor access to Medicaid programs in their state, claiming that the plans could suddenly expand and their costs would be too high. For the next several years, and through many court fights, leaders in these states fought against Obamacare in any form. The Supreme Court finally ruled that it was legal but could not require enrollment and canceled the provision called the individual mandate. This made the program more expensive since the healthy young population necessary to balance the insured pool would not be as large. In the reach for almost universal coverage, Medicaid was an important portion, but its hope also was not fully realized. Medicaid and welfare benefits in many Southern states have long been among the most difficult to obtain and among the least expansive in benefits. For example, many states allow mothers to stay on Medicaid for the year after the birth of a child; some states, such as Texas, only allow for two months' coverage after the birth. That barely allows time for the mothers' six-week check-up and there is little time to address any complications found then. Single men of working age are not eligible for coverage in many states.

Here is the way Maryland currently describes its benefits: "Many different groups of people may be eligible for Medicaid in Maryland. As part of health reform, Maryland expanded Medicaid to nearly all adults under age 65 with incomes at or below 138% of the Federal Poverty Level or about $1,564 per month for a household of one person in 2022​.  ​

To be eligible for Medicaid, applicants must meet Medicaid eligibility requirements​. Medicaid requirements are based on state and federal law. Some requirements, such as income limits, vary for different groups of people and household sizes. Children and pregnant women, for example, may be eligible at higher household income limits.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported on work requirements and waivers under the pandemic eligibility changes. “The Trump Administration aimed to reshape the Medicaid program by newly approving Section 1115 demonstration waivers that imposed work and reporting requirements as a condition of Medicaid eligibility. However, courts struck down many of these approvals and the Supreme Court recently dismissed pending challenges in these cases. The Court dismissed pending litigation in Arkansas and New Hampshire due to the expiration of Arkansas' waiver as well as the Biden Administration's earlier withdrawals of these approved work requirement waivers. The Biden Administration had concluded that these provisions reduce coverage and thus do not promote the objectives of the Medicaid program. States could have appealed these withdrawal decisions to the HHS Departmental Appeals Board, and Georgia has challenged the withdrawal of its work requirements in court. An initial decision in the Georgia case is currently pending.

Although few Medicaid work and reporting requirements were implemented due to litigation, state withdrawals, and/or pauses during the COVID-19 pandemic, available implementation data from Arkansas suggests that these requirements were confusing to enrollees and result in substantial coverage loss, including among eligible individuals. This recent history of Medicaid work requirements illustrates the tensions between states, changing presidential administrations, and the courts. This issue brief answers key questions about these provisions:”

Right now, in the Republican-dominated House, Representatives are attempting to make Medicaid eligibility tied to work rules. They are again trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, threatening loss of coverage for millions as explained in this White House press release. Some elected officials are ignoring the reality that many who are on Medicaid are working, but may not have enough hours for insurance coverage at their workplace or cannot afford to buy insurance with the minimum wage jobs they hold. Many others have mental health issues, multiple medical conditions or are elderly and unable to work.

Under the pandemic relief legislation, the government expanded Medicaid since workers lost jobs, became too ill to work, or had family members to care for. Now that the president has declared that the pandemic health emergency is over, many of these provisions are being rolled back. Free school meals for all and other food assistance programs have already been reduced. Programs such as SNAP and Children's Health Care Programs (CHIP) have already seen losses of allocated funds and thus coverage for needy children and seniors. Termination of the emergency allowed states to legally roll back coverage. This rollback is supposed to be gradual and take place over the next year. Several states have already announced their cuts. These states include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire, and South Dakota; Republicans govern all but Arizona.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, "The Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansion expanded Medicaid coverage to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level ($20,120 for an individual in 2023) and provided states with an enhanced federal matching rate (FMAP) for their expansion population

To date, 41 states (including DC) have adopted the Medicaid expansion and 10 states have not adopted the expansion. Current status for each state is based on KFF tracking and analysis of state expansion activity.”

Those ten states currently are (according to the article above): Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Catherine Rampell, writing in The Washington Post, reports: Many who will be purged are actually eligible, but administrativesnafus and other issues cause their removals from lists. Since many in this population move frequently looking for affordable housing, and do not update their addresses in the system, they get dropped. Perhaps they cannot afford to take off work for an intake interview or don't have child care or transportation to the local welfare offices. These problems seem simple to those of us used to dealing with bureaucracies, but to a young mother with poor English skills, and other barriers, they seem insurmountable. She further states:

 

"Unfortunately, this red tape is the same reason why lots of eligible families get purged even in a normal, non-end-of-pandemic year. As aberrant as the current “Medicaid unwinding" might appear, it obscures a problem that has long ailed U.S. government programs at virtually all levels: how little federal and state policymakers have done to guarantee access to critical, promised safety-net benefits.

 

Depending on the state, proving and re-proving eligibility for Medicaid (or food stamps, or other programs) can be somewhere between cumbersome and impossible. In some parts of the country, this is deliberate: Government-hating politicians want fewer poor people to get benefits. Rather than changing eligibility requirements (which courts don't always favor), officials set up an obstacle course and hope some people get tripped up.”

 

She also notes that during the pandemic, the expanded coverage for Medicaid included 85-89 million  enrollees. They expect approximately 15 million of those currently enrolled to be cut.

 

We are the richest country in the world. The Affordable Care Act brought millions of Americans into the Healthcare system, Under Medicare, we cover our seniors for 80% of their costs,(that is, unless they   pay also for secondary Insurance, and drug coverage or have Medicaid,) then most of that 20% left is also paid for. During the Pandemic, we showed we could cover more people. We could also improve preventable care and treat patients in routine follow-up care rather than just for emergency or catastrophic care, which is what happens when people have no regular affordable coverage. We have shown that we can do this; it is unconscionable that we are choosing to not do so. We may soon have even fewer options to treat patients. Many areas, especially in rural communities, have lost their local hospitals. Elective surgery and Medicaid payments kept many of these hospitals open. When only emergency surgery was allowed during the pandemic, this financial drain was too much and the hospitals closed, sometimes leaving only a clinic or medical building behind.

 

In another, but related news note this week, NPR reports a judge in Texas (where else?) ruled in favor of Christian religious business groups who did not want to be required to pay for preventative care under the ACA for an HIV prevention drug called PrEP, nor for contraception, addiction counseling or STD screening. The groups claimed that by allowing this preventive care, they would promote services for homosexuality or immoral purposes and be denied their religious freedoms. Unfortunately, this portion of the act also covers breast cancer and other cancer screenings, heart conditions, and other needed services. The judge

wanted to apply his ruling nationwide, but has not yet done so; this is under review/appeal by the Biden administration. Somehow, I think that there may well be many employees working for these businesses who need these medications; I hope they can find different jobs with better bosses.

 

Also in the news this week was the matter of an indictment released by the New York City Grand Jury reviewing illegal payments to a porn star(s) and misuse of accounting tactics to cover up these payments. For the first time in the history of the United States, we have indicted a former president. He will appear for arraignment and to hear the charges on Tuesday. I expect and hope these are the first of many other indictments.

 

‘Til next week-Peace!