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OPINION

Thousands of Kids in Florida Lost Medicaid Coverage on Easter – Nearly Half a Million Last Year

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Nearly half-a-million children in Florida have lost Medicaid coverage over the past year, after the DeSantis administration and Florida Republican lawmakers chose to not extend Medicaid coverage as the COVID pandemic was declared officially over. Florida reportedly is the only state in the nation to not adopt the Biden administration’s strategies to “minimize terminations for procedural reasons.”

Thousands of children on Easter Sunday lost coverage, NBC6 reported.

“Florida has dropped over 1.3 million people, including 460,000 children, from its state Medicaid program since April 1, 2023, after the end of a pandemic-era policy that banned states from removing ineligible participants from the health insurance program for disabled and low-income people,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The reasons for Florida dropping 1.3 million from Medicaid are varied, including improvement in economic status, or just “red tape.”

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra has issued strong criticism of Florida’s actions.

“Children in Florida have ‘without a doubt’ lost coverage due to paperwork snafus,” Secretary Becerra told the Sentinel. “Becerra previously sent a letter to DeSantis and eight other governors expressing concern about the large number of children who had lost coverage due to red tape.”

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“It continues to not just disturb but confound, I think, a lot of folks that some states have chosen not to address the loss of health care by so many children,” Becerra also said. “… Denying that child those services is not just unconscionable, it’s a nightmare for the family.”

In January the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “the Sunshine State, with 2.5 million uninsured, also has one of the nation’s highest shares of residents without health coverage.”

“In turning back a program that could bring health coverage to roughly 1 million Floridians, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate also are rejecting about $5.6 billion in federal aid which would come in the first two years of expansion, and about $4.4 billion annually after that.”

Last year HuffPost‘s Jonathan Cohn reported Florida’s uninsured amounts to “about 12% of its population, which is well above the national average of 8.6%. It’s also more than all but four other states,” Cohn added. “Floridians without insurance suffer because when they can’t pay for their medical care, they end up in debt or go without needed treatment or both. The state suffers, too, because it ends up with a sicker, less productive workforce as well as a higher charity care load for its hospitals, clinics and other pieces of the medical safety net. DeSantis could do something about this. He has refused.”

Meanwhile. The Florida Policy Institute reported last month, “Florida is the only state that has not opted to utilize policy flexibilities offered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to reduce the number of children losing coverage due to system error or red tape.”

Florida has its own children’s health care alternative to Medicaid, Florida’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, or KidCare, which “offers free, subsidized and full-pay insurance for kids whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid,” according to the Sentinel.

But coverage differs from Medicaid, as a report from WFLA shows. The DeSantis administration is suing to try to force the Biden administration to drop a federal policy that requires children to be allowed to stay on the state’s plan even if their parents miss payments.

Dropping 1.3 million people in Florida exacerbates an existing health care problem.

Late last month the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported, “More than 1,300 babies a year, about four a day, die in Florida.” That report, the first in a series of three is titled, “Born to die: Florida’s infant mortality crisis.”

“Health experts say the losses of new life will continue unless the state rethinks how it fails mothers before and during pregnancy,” the paper observed. “The biggest risk to an infant’s health is always the mother’s health. When mothers have preexisting conditions, like diabetes, obesity or heart disease, their babies face a higher risk of death. Everything from Florida’s impenetrable insurance structure to its ineffective investment in maternal and prenatal health contributes to the high rate of babies who die within their first year of life, sometimes within their first minutes.”

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“Compared to a decade ago, pregnant women in Florida are older, less healthy and have more complications during birth, according to Florida Department of Health maternal health records. They also are living in a state where access to insurance — or the right insurance — is a barrier to primary and prenatal care.”

The Sun Sentinel also offered these statistics:

“Six of every 1,000 babies born in Florida die before their first birthday, a rate that exceeds the national average of 5.6. Florida babies die mostly from birth defects that affect eating or breathing, infections prevalent in preterm and low birthweight babies, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Most infants in Florida who die under the age of 1 die within their very first month. Black babies in Florida die twice as often as white non-Hispanic and Hispanic babies.”

The paper says insurance is a major factor.

“One-fifth of Florida women ages 19 to 44 have no health insurance, which is worse than 46 other states,” while “Florida is one of only 10 states where the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid for low-income adults has not been implemented. That means thousands of women of child-bearing age can’t get Medicaid health insurance for primary care who would have coverage in expansion states like Virginia or New York.”

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OPINION

‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

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9 hours ago

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May 20, 2024

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Trump trial watchers are raising questions over the increasingly large number of elected Republicans and big-name allies showing up at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building to show support for the indicted ex-president, often giving angry and factually inaccurate speeches before the cameras, or standing behind the defendant in the background as he delivers his rants to reporters.

They are usually all men, and usually all dressed just as Donald Trump does: blue suit, white shirt, red tie.

Public Notice founder Aaron Rupar on Monday, observed, “they’re all in Trump costumes again. how cute.”

Questions about their “uniforms,” and more importantly, who is funding and organizing their travel, are being raised.

Media critic Jennifer Schulze, a former Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism, commented: “The trump uniforms angle is flying way too low beneath the mainstream news radar. The same is true for how this weird courtroom guest star show is being organized & financed.”

READ MORE: Why Alito’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag Story Just Fell Apart

And they are being called “uniforms.”

Filmmaker and podcaster Andy Ostroy declared, “I’m sorry, but all these #Trump capos showing up each day at the trial dressed exactly the same as The Godfather in blue suit and red tie is not only creepy AF but is a chilling foreshadowing of the fascist uniform-wearing government they’re jonesin’ to be a part of…”

Talk radio host Joan Esposito also asked who’s paying for these appearances: “Is the trump campaign paying for these surrogates to fly to & from nyc? If not, who is?”

Political commentator Bob Cesca remarked, “Trump’s fanboys are like the Wack Pack from the Stern show circa 1990.”

Monday’s star surrogates included South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, an election denier who had supported overturning the 2020 presidential election and signed onto what has been called a “false and frivolous” lawsuit attempting to overturn the results.

Also, Republican U.S. Reps. Eric Burlison, Andrew Clyde, Mary Miller, and Keith Self. And John Coale from the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Trump attorney and GOP attorney general candidate Will Scharf, convicted felon and Trump pardon recipient Bernie Kerik, Trump loyalist and former Trump administration official Kash Patel, and others.

READ MORE: Law ‘Requires’ Alito and Thomas to Recuse Says Former Federal Prosecutor

Op-ed columnist Terry Cowgill last week called them “manservants…standing at attention like automatons.”

“Scary and very very strange” was actress and activist Mia Farrow’s observation last week.

Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast, an MSNBC political analyst, last week asked, “Why did they all wear the same outfit?”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to post this video last week:

See the social media posts and videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Partisan Insurrectionist’: Calls Mount for Alito’s Ouster After ‘Stop the Steal’ Scandal

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OPINION

Why Alito’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag Story Just Fell Apart

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3 days ago

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May 17, 2024

By

Justice Samuel Alito’s defense for why there was a “Stop the Steal” flag flying at his Alexandria, Virginia home three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, ten days after the January 6, 2021 insurrection, just fell apart.

The entire justification for a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice with lifetime tenure who refuses to recuse himself from cases including ones related to the 2020 election, which ethics experts and U.S. Senators say he is obligated to do so, is a dispute with a neighbor, according to The New York Times‘ original reporting, and a Fox News reporter.

Critics say his defense doesn’t justify flying a U.S. flag upside down, a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement used by insurrectionists.

In brief, Fox News’ Shannon Bream reports Justice Alito “told me a neighbor on their street had a ‘F— Trump’ sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan 21. Mrs. Alito brought this up with the neighbor.”

“According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the Jan 6th attacks,” Bream wrote. She added Alito “says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign. Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language, ‘including the c-word’,” which prompted Mrs. Alito to hang the American flag upside down as the insurrections did on January 6.

RELATED: ‘Partisan Insurrectionist’: Calls Mount for Alito’s Ouster After ‘Stop the Steal’ Scandal

Court watchers and critics have called into question Alito’s judgment. Senate Democratic Judiciary Chairman Dick Durban has called for the Justice to recuse himself from all cases related to the 2020 presidential election, NBC News is reporting.

Critics are asking if Justice and/or Mrs. Alito’s response to an alleged dispute with neighbors was appropriate, but now Justice Alito’s telling of events is being called into question entirely.

Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), says no school children would have been waiting for school buses at the time the Alito’s flag was photographed upside down, because schools had moved to virtual learning during the COVID pandemic at that time in the area the Alitos reside.

Further calling into question Justice Alito’s claims, CNN’s Holmes Lybrand, a former fact-checker for The Weekly Standard, reports none of the Alitos’ neighbors remember the alleged dispute the justice recounted.

“I spoke with some of Justice Alito’s neighbors who said they remember the American flag being flown upside-down at his home but didn’t recall any neighborhood drama surrounding it,” Lyband reports. “Each neighbor I spoke with reiterated multiple times how kind and well-liked the Alitos are.”

In its report that broke the story, The New York Times noted, “The half-dozen neighbors who saw the flag, or knew of it, requested anonymity because they said they did not want to add to the contentiousness on the block and feared reprisal.”

READ MORE: Trump Appears to Violate Gag Order After Judge Threatened ‘Incarceration’

 

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OPINION

Alito Tells Fox News Story Behind His Home’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag but Critics Unconvinced

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4 days ago

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May 17, 2024

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Editor’s note: The spelling of Fox News host Shannon Bream’s last name has been corrected.

Justice Samuel Alito on Friday appeared to compound concerns over the bombshell New York Times report revealing a flag associated with the January 6 insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” movement was flying at his house just before Joe Biden was inaugurated and while the Supreme Court was reviewing a 2020 election case.

Alito, whose far-right positions including writing the majority opinion in the Supreme Court case overturning Roe v. Wade, have infuriated and frustrated the left, once again has found himself the subject of apprehension over his impartiality and grasp of ethical norms.

In a rare move, the embattled justice, who now faces strong calls for his ouster, spoke immediately to the news media to address those issues, and revealed the story behind the decision to fly the “Stop the Steal” flag at his home.

Confirming again it was his wife who put the flag up, Alito seemed neither remorseful nor cognizant of the great ethical and credibility violation that act represented.

RELATED: ‘Partisan Insurrectionist’: Calls Mount for Alito’s Ouster After ‘Stop the Steal’ Scandal

“I spoke directly with Justice #Alito about the flag story in the NYT,” Fox News host Shannon Bream reported late Friday morning via social media. “In addition to what’s in the story, he told me a neighbor on their street had a ‘F— Trump’ sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan 21. Mrs. Alito brought this up with the neighbor.”

“According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the Jan 6th attacks,” Bream continued.

“Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign. Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language, ‘including the c-word’,” she wrote. “Following that exchange, Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down ‘for a short time’. Justice Alito says some neighbors on his street are ‘very political’ and acknowledges it was a very heated time in January 2021.”

The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol chastised Bream, noting she got Alito’s side of the story without “trying to see how it compares with the accounts and recollections of others involved. If only the anchor had the resources of a ‘news’ channel to seek out the truth!”

Some critics responding to Bream’s report say Alito’s explanation doesn’t make their perception of his actions — or his wife’s – any more reasonable.

Former George W. Bush administration official Christian Vanderbrouk commented, “Sam Alito is unapologetic for desecrating an American symbol as part of a neighborhood feud.”

READ MORE: Why Are One in Five GOP Voters Still Voting for Nikki Haley Over Donald Trump?

“Interesting claims by Alito,” attorney Robert J. DeNault remarked. “Not sure it’s reasonable to think any person would react to a neighbor disagreeing — even crassly or rudely — over Trump by hanging an American flag upside down. Does not feel credible to contend Alito’s upside flag was divorced from MAGA symbolism.”

“Alito speaks to Fox about New York Times report, continues to attribute it to his wife, but does not explain why his wife’s reaction to a ‘fuck Trump’ sign and being insulted was to hang an American flag upside down in the days after Jan. 6.” observed CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere. “Suburban neighborhood disputes happen all the time – over lawn care, noisy children, Christmas lights… all sorts of things. Not many instances of an escalated response being a now very politicized symbol of military distress.”

“Friendly reminder the entire GOP and Fox News is screaming on practically a daily basis that Judge Merchan needs to recuse because of the work his adult daughter separately does,” national security attorney Brad Moss offered. “But yeah, this is no biggie.”

READ MORE: ‘Long History of Playing Games’: Biden Campaign Shuts Down Trump’s Tantrum

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