In Florida, if you're poor and must turn to Medicaid to get the most basic medical care for you and your family, your right to sue and recover will most likely be sharply limited. Why?

The Florida Legislature is "reforming" Medicaid.

Of course, it "has to be done" since more and more people who simply don't make enough money to survive are expected to swell Medicaid rolls in the near future. Of course, it "has to be done" because doctors are refusing to treat Medicaid patients. Many say they don't "make enough" money off these cases, and, if they do get screwed up, the patients  can sue them and get what a jury would award for "pain and suffering?" Oh no!

Of course, the real reason it "has to be done" is because those few who are making decent money feel "entitled" to keep their money, not have it "plundered" by a society in which they participate, from which they have profited.

This bill coming before the Tallahasee House makes it all quite clear: the GOP majority in Tallahassee truly believes that the poor don't deserve to have pain or suffering; that theirs is less meaningful than others; that the lives of the non-wealthy are simply of less worth, of less value...

I hope they can explain that to a grieving spouse who could no longer afford COBRA insurance prices after a lay-off; to a minimum wage worker who can no longer live a decent life due to a botched surgery that wasn't covered by any employer insurance; to a working poor parent who sent their laughing smiling teenager in for a simple procedure and who now has to change diapers and spoon feed that teen...a child, in whose eyes that parent once saw the brightest most productive future.

In Florida, the message is clear: if, for whatever reason, you are poor, you do not deserve the simple respect and dignity that should be accorded to all human beings...that you do not deserve rights and now, you do not deserve your pain.