Medicaid appeal is like a lynching

To the editor:

Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton bragged recently that only 1 percent of those affected by Medicaid cuts bothered to file an appeal.

A Jackson woman with severe disabilities appeared at such an appeal hearing recently in Cape Girardeau along with 15 supporters including her physician, family members and friends. The promised hearing had more in common with a frontier-style lynching for a criminal than it did a compassionate hearing for a respected disabled person in a modern democracy. Exhibits for the state were coldly labeled and organized as if collected from a crime scene, while a lawyer representing the state strictly controlled testimony. Witnesses including her physician were forbidden to present any medical information, as it was deemed irrelevant to the proceedings, as was most other testimony. The outcome was never in doubt.

Similar treatment by the Medicaid reform commission has left Missourians with disabilities furious. The commission recently played a shell game by moving meetings scheduled for Southeast Missouri to other locations. Those testifying at hearings have been humiliated by rude treatment and accused of fakery. One commission member who engaged in this behavior later gleefully accepted a six-figure salary from the nursing-home industry as a lobbyist, resigning as a lawmaker.

Currently in Missouri, hardened criminals have a better chance at winning their freedom through appeal than do disabled citizens seeking to appeal for the right to life. Missouri lawmakers have decided that our sick and disabled do not rate the same rights as criminals.

WILL RICHARDSON, Jackson