Watch this, America. A state may be about to do something sensible, bipartisan and even humanitarian to take care of its people.
It could still fall apart, as it has before. But Virginia’s lawmakers appear to be on the verge of insuring about 400,000 low-income residents by expanding Medicaid after years of refusing to do so.
Remember, Virginia is a place where thousands of people queue up before dawn on one weekend every summer to get free treatment from volunteers who turn livestock pens into medical crash units at the Wise County Fairgrounds because people are so desperate for care.
It’s a scene I visited four years ago when the Remote Area Medical clinic was the only hope for folks with bleeding gums, black lungs, oxygen tanks and broken backs to get treatment.
The rural county still hosts this clinic every year, and what unfolds looks like refugee camps in war-ravaged countries. At midnight before the clinic opened that year, 1,204 people were already in line. And it wouldn’t have been necessary if the commonwealth had expanded access to the federal health-care program for the poor.
Last year, my brother, an EMT, volunteered his time with the Remote Area Medical Clinic program. He went down to Richmond County, to give back to the community where he grew up. He felt a tremendous amount of empathy for those people, who lined up before daylight to get medical treatment. Some slept overnight in their cars. Some camped out. I believe he was surprised to see just how much this community needed the services that were provided.
400,000 is a lot of people to be without medical plans. Nearly 8.5 million people live in Virginia. That’s just under 5% of the people in Virginia without any medical care plan. That’s just too damn many.
Hopefully Virginia will do the right thing and pass legislation to extend medicaid so that these 400,000 people of all ages can begin to start having decent medical treatment. To do otherwise is simply immoral.
