Governor Corbett had a rare run-in yesterday with a man who was tragically affected by the Governor’s refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. The Governor has been known to avoid the people most affected by his policies.
Outside the doors to a $1,000 a plate Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Governor Corbett met with Scot Rosenzweig, a man from Allentown whose uninsured fiancé recently passed away from untreated health conditions.
“If she had access to good, preventative healthcare services when she needed it, her life would have been saved,” said Rosenzweig.
In the encounter, Mr. Rosenzweig gave the Governor an enlarged photo of his fiancé and encouraged him to expand Medicaid. Governor Corbett said that he can’t both expand Medicaid and work on fixing problems he sees with the system, but he assured Mr. Rosenzweig that “I believe we will have [Healthy PA] by the end of the year.”
Governor Corbett’s proposed alternative plan to Medicaid expansion -“Healthy PA” – will cut existing Medicaid coverage for seniors, people with disabilities and pregnant women while imposing new and unnecessary government mandates. Additionally, if a version of the long-delayed plan is approved by federal officials expanded coverage will not take effect until 2015, leaving 400,000 people to be denied insurance and forced to risk their health for at least a year.
That’s too little, too late for Scot who asked the Governor, “How many people have to die before we fix the problem?”
“Governor Corbett needs to see and hear the consequences of his decision to delay Medicaid Expansion for hundreds of thousands of uninsured people all across the state. We are not just talking about facts and figures; real people’s lives are at stake,” said Rosenzweig in a media statement.