Remember the “welfare queen”? That invention of the Republican Right who siphons money from upright taxpayers and blows it on hooch and hair rollers? Well, she is back (along with her baby’s daddy), according to Mike Jensen, publisher of the Sikeston, Mo., Standard Democrat. But, in this incarnation, she is the Medicaid queen, and she is rolling with the Medicaid baller.
In a recent editorial, complete with “I know you are all thinking this” winks and nudges, Jensen dismissed Medicaid as a “multi-billion dollar drain to the state taxpayers” and rejected the idea that the state should provide healthcare to people who spend their money on “new shiny rims,” “a beauty shop” or “a $500 leather coat” when they should be taking care of “other obligations and responsibilities” n like, presumably, a comprehensive healthcare plan.
Jensen’s choice of luxury items evidently types the Medicaid cheats of his imagination as urban black folks. Here we go again. So, our government reserves are not being depleted by expensive wars and ill-considered tax cuts for the right; we are asked to believe instead that we are being bankrupted by medical care provided to African-American party animals.
This point of view is rooted in ignorance and racism, so reasoning may be useless, but perhaps the Standard Democrat missed the news flash that the lives of almost 84,000 black Americans could be saved each year if blacks had the same access to quality healthcare that whites folks have. That was the recent conclusion of former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher and five other researchers.
In the face of facts like that, to argue that fewer healthcare opportunities should be provided to the needy, so many of whom are black, is to say: let them die. Let more of them die. Let them all die. So long as I can save on taxes. The argument is, in spirit, genocidal.