The compassionately challenged

To the editor:

Comments lately regarding Medicaid cuts cause my blood to boil. Everyone is an expert! Well, let me tell you about my job. I drive a shuttle transporting disabled people to their jobs and vital services. One woman in her early 60s has worked hard all of her life, has MS, and still works as a valued resource in our community thanks to a motorized wheelchair and some very expensive medication. She now faces loss of her medications and possibly loss of independence. Many others I transport face equally bleak situations. These people were remembered in our Constitution when it mentioned promoting the general welfare and by Jesus when he talked of helping the needy but have been shamefully abandoned by our current crop of compassionately challenged lawmakers in Jefferson City. They are victims of a hastily contrived and poorly thought out piece of legislation that does nothing to end abuse of the system while very definitely abusing the innocent.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this outrage, it is that we must be very careful in selecting our lawmakers. We had better make certain they do more than talk a good story when it comes to morality and possess the maturity to understand what separates us from barbarians is compassion. Stuffing disabled people into institutions hoping they will go away is an ugly reminder of the survival of the fittest attitude embraced by many now extinct totalitarian states.

RICHARD BUELTEMANN, Cape Girardeau