Torturing the Language, Too

Research from England has shown for the umpteenth time that the richer you are, the healthier you are and more likely you are to live longer.

A cursory reading would suggest that income buys better health care, but the UK has a single national system and studies there and in the United States show that for many life-threatening diseases, access to quality care is nearly universal.

Evidence keeps showing that that disease and early death may come from the stress associated with being in a lower income class.

Which brings us to the one of the more class-conscious nations in the world – the United States. A week after the news media revealed that the Bush administration was going to throw millions of mentally ill and other Americans off the Medicaid rolls if they could not prove citizenship, White House regulators overrode the will of Congress, dissembling that the offensive Dickensian provision of law was really a “scrivener’s error.”

To make the argument, White House lawyers had to take the English language and torture it, a method of suasion they are used to routinely approving.

I didn’t even know they HAD scriveners anymore, but whoever holds the position did a heckuva job on this one.


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3 thoughts on “Torturing the Language, Too”

  1. Although Medicaid is the program of last resort for many, individuals with assets frequently have to “spend down” in order to be eligible for services. Thus, those who may be removed from the rolls due to lack of citizenship documentation may not necessarily be impoverished.

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