A candidate for a full term as governor (after Greitens’ departure in disgrace), Mike Parson has been a successful cattleman for decades. That fact makes one wonder. No owner of cattle would fail to provide health care to his animals. To do so would invite disease that would diminish their value. So, owners know that it is essential to keep animals healthy with ready access to professional health care.
Governor Parson has failed to extend common-sense animal husbandry to humans in the State of Missouri that he now supposedly governs. Parson has shown no concern as 120,000 Missourians, including tens of thousands of children, have been removed from Medicaid rolls. Lack of access to care will mean needless death and suffering. It also will cause a significant increase in emergency room visits, a cost all Missourians will bear, unnecessarily.
Parson and his “health” director have done everything they (and the state) can to obstruct and deny health care to younger Missouri women, almost resulting in closure of the state’s only Planned Parenthood facility. (A federal court ruled that the state’s case was inadequate, so health care still may be delivered to women at the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic in the Central West End, despite Parson administration efforts.)
Does Parson believe that cattle deserve access to health care but that people, particularly poor people and women, do not? Apparently.
Arthur Hoffman
St. Louis
