Tom Sisk: Life-saving expansion

I just read Gene Nichol’s Sept. 25 Point of View “An exercise in villainy” on the sales tax shenanigans of our North Carolina legislature.

The lawmakers are far more concerned with sliding an extra dollar into the pocket of the wealthy than they are with actually taking care of our state. This fawning subservience to the rich has led them to do what can be described only as horrible actions – the worst being the refusal to extend Medicaid to cover the half a million people who desperately need it.

There will be hundreds of preventable deaths each year, and the pols use the myth of emergency room substitution for true health care to deceive themselves about the true ramifications of their actions. ERs are required only to stabilize patients, and that does not include disease treatment to the point of cure.

Hundreds of people will die from diseases like cancer that could be cured if caught early but won’t be because these legislative victims can’t afford health care. ERs will not function as a substitute. Those deaths should weigh heavily against the souls of those responsible.

Given that basic human decency isn’t apparently sufficient, if these legislators are religious, they really ought to be worried.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Tom Sisk: Life-saving expansion."