India, China To Send Medical Relief Teams to Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana

News From 2016 – Reported Now!

[Editor’s Note:  This is part of a series of news reports from the year 2016 based on Mitt Romney winning the Presidency and Republicans Taking control of the Senate and retaining control of the House.  These stories are not a predictions of what will happen, but they are indications of what could happen.  That in itself should be scary enough.]

Joint Chinese-Indian Medical Teams to Arrive in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi Next Month

Montgomery, Al. (Reuters) April 31, 2016.   Final plans were announced by a group of medical teams composed of physicians, nurses and other medical personnel to provide health care services to low income residents of three southern states.  The Chinese and Indian governments said in a joint statement that they were horrified by the lack of even basic medical care in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and that  human decency required them to send relief.

"It just breaks our hearts to see young children dying from preventable and treatable illnesses" said the Minister of Health Care for India.  He went on to add that "Yes, our country still needs more basic health care, but when there are people in the world suffering more than we are our calling insists we help."    The program to send aid to America is widely supported in both China and India, even in poorer regions where the citizens have expressed similar sentiments.

Medical services for low income residents of the three states became practically non-existent after the federal/state Medicaid program was turned into a block grant program by the federal government.  Under that program the federal government has sent decreasing amounts of money to states to support Medicaid.  Almost all states have had to cut back medical services for low income and handicapped individuals, but voters in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana decided to end the programs entirely.  Federal law allowed them to do this, and to divert the federal funds to property tax relief for second homes.

Pictures of children being turned away from hospital emergency rooms and homeless adults dying in unheated shacks produced outrage throughout the world, but the Romney administration stood by the programs.  “It is not the job of the federal government to provide health care for everyone” said an administration spokesperson “and nor it is the role of the federal government to tell a state how to spend federal block grant money”. 

Life expectancy in Mississippi among those at less than 200% of the poverty level is now lower than any other country in the world except North Korea.  In fact the North Koreans had offered to join the Chinese-Indian team saying that they could not stand by and watch the tragedy in U. S. health care unfold, but State Department officials refused entry, arguing that the U. S. would not accept help from any Commies and that if people had to die to uphold these principles of democracy and freedom, so be it. An effort by Cuba was similarly rebuffed.

Several for-profit hospital chains had set up programs in the three states, but the pay-in-advance requirement kept almost all patients from participating.  “We find it very difficult to get payments after treatment” a spokesman for Health Care of U. S., Inc. said, and “it is particularly hard to get payment after a patient dies”.  Health Care of the U. S. said it had record profits in 2015, but only because it was able to adopt a hard line approach and only admit patients who could pay up front.

In other health care related news Congress passed laws that provides for full government paid health insurance for all members of Congress, their families, their staffs and for veterinary health insurance for five pets or less.  The vote was unanimous, reflecting the widely held belief that members of Congress need the best possible health care in order to serve the nation.