Medicaid is the safety net for people who can’t afford health coverage or don’t receive medical benefits from employers. It helps people. It keeps people alive. About 70 million people are covered, half are poor children.

David Lazarus’s L.A. Times column talks about how the GOP wants to take that aid away in order to tax rich people less. Yes, the “pro-life” party would rather let the less fortunate among us die than raise taxes on those who have more money than they know what to do with.

I’m posting bits and pieces from the column, but please read all of it and then pass it on to those who are turning their backs on working families (or those who are trying to get work or can’t work) who just can’t make ends meet, families with brand new babies who are born with life-threatening conditions who must be hospitalized and cared for in order to save their brand new little lives. Saving brand new little lives costs money that some families don’t have.

Share it with so-called family values Republicans, “pro-lifers” who demand forced ultrasounds and births but once that’s accomplished, ignore the newborns who need urgent care; instead they’re willing to let them die because Medicaid is something Democrats– President Obama specifically– support, something that our big evil life-saving government is forcing on the opposing party, apparently so they and the Muslim Brotherhood can take over the world.

Lazarus:

Republican leaders are determined to protect rich people from paying higher taxes. Now they also want to reduce health coverage for the poor.

You’ve really got to wonder about these guys. [...] This is scary stuff [...]

Medicaid is a declaration that healthcare in the United States is not limited solely to those fortunate enough to have well-compensating jobs or fat bank accounts. [...]

But cutting access to Medicaid for many low-income people, as the Republicans are proposing, isn’t just horribly shortsighted — would they prefer people turning instead to emergency rooms? — it’s an act of meanness unbecoming of the party of supposed family values.

Paul Castro, chief executive of Jewish Family Service, an L.A. nonprofit that assists the needy:

“Without Medicaid,” he said, “we’d see levels of poverty in this country we can’t even imagine.”

Medicaid isn’t just another budget item, such as the nearly $80 billion the Air Force has spent so far developing a new fighter jet, or the almost $600 billion that the Navy will spend on warships over the next 30 years.

Medicaid is people. It’s a fair chance.

It’s a healthy little baby now residing in Paulina and Jose Cifuentez’s home.

David Lazarus is an author and American business and consumer columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He won first place in the 2005 National Headliner Awards contest for business reporting. And the Society of Professional Journalists in Northern California named him “Journalist of the Year” in 2001. (Wikipedia)