Florida and the Affordable Health Care Act

          Our sunshine state is a very attractive place to live for the elderly due to its good weather conditions.  A huge percentage of our current population is retirees and the number for aging residents continues to rise.  Despite not just seniors are in need of long term care, a big portion of LTC is used by them. Because of our high number of elder citizens, along with the many other ill who require long term care, our state scores high in the utilization of these health services. With that being said, allow me to bring to my readers’ attention the fact that Florida holds the second place in the whole country for having the most uninsured residents.  Therefore, much of our LTC patients are insured through Medicare and Medicaid.  As a consequence of our poor state budget and incompetency, many of those who need LTC are not receiving proper care, and we are in desperate need of federal grants to help fund those programs.

           Well, going back to our incompetency…our light of hope was recently darkened by ruling the Affordable Health Care Act as unconstitutional!  A Pensacola federal judge decided that despite our current $3.7 billion budget deficit, the much needed assistance that the AHC act was offering us was simply against our constitution.   Those funds would have positively affected many health care areas, including LTC.  I find ironic that our governor, Mr. Scott, even referred to this federal funds as money that he didn’t wanted to “waste” from the federal government as this law was unconstitutional.  Waste? Really?  Our senior citizens are selling their assets, getting involved in unethical practices such as trading their life insurance policies in order to get some cash to barely afford their LTC bills, and struggling in so many other ways… and our governor still thinks that the AHC is a waste?  It is sad that the inept attitude, insensibility, and selfishness of some are condemning so many needed patients to struggle and poorly receive long term care.

"Federal Grants Decline." McKnights. 01 Sept. 2011. Web. 11 Sept. 2011. <http://www.mcknights.com/nursing-home-residents-risk-losing-bed-holds/article/211609/>.