hypocrite of the year: politician who had his big medical bill paid by medicaid, opposes for others

[Demovictory9]

:large

Link to tweet

https://arktimes.com/columns/max-brantley/2014/02/27/rep-josh-miller-recipient-of-significant-government-assistance-opposes-medicaid-expansion-in-arkansas

Miller is of interest because he’s a well-known beneficiary of federal government support himself.

Miller, 33, was on an alcohol-fueled drive with a friend about 11 years ago (he can’t remember who was driving) when their pickup plunged off a ravine near Choctaw. He was rescued, but suffered a broken neck and was paralyzed. Miller was uninsured. What young, fit man needs health insurance, he thought then. (He had some reason to know better. Not long before, he’d broken his hand in a fight and had to refuse the recommended surgery to fix the injuries properly because he was uninsured.)

Months of hospitalization and rehabilitation followed, including a long stretch in intensive care at St. Vincent Infirmary. There was a $1 million bill. Medicaid paid most of it. Miller was placed on disability and checks began. In time, between Medicaid and Medicare, all his health costs were covered by the federal government. For that reason, he need not be among the 82 Arkansas legislators (61 percent of the body) who enjoy heavily subsidized and comprehensive state employee health insurance.

Health insurance isn’t Miller’s only government benefit. Another federal Medicaid program for which he qualifies provides daily personal care assistance.

Between the government-paid trauma care, ongoing Medicare and Medicaid coverage, government-provided personal assistant and his own grit, Miller has made a full life. He manages a rental property business (some government-subsidized renters are among his tenants) and serves as a legislator.

[True Blue American]

1. Steve Scalise

Did the same thing. After his life being saved by the best Medical care in the world steve stood laughing in front of the WhiteHouse with Trump laughing they had just voted to kill the ACA!

[Demovictory9]

2. hypocrite!!!

[More_Cowbell]

3. He's @Josh_Miller66 if you want to remind him what a hypocrite he is. nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Ahhh, the hypocrisy.

Sort of how Representatives and Senators at the federal level tend to oppose things like Medicare and Social Security. After all, they have a fully funded health care and retirement system, so why should they care about anyone else?

God, how I hate these people.

An addendum. To all of you who lionize the pension systems of the past, please understand that only a minority of workers were ever covered under them. And just a couple of days ago I was listening to something on NPR, a man who'd left teaching to be a coal miner for the higher pay. Totally understandable. But after 18 years on the job, the coal mine closed down. He was two years short of a pension. Two points. To all of you who trash 401k plans, understand that one major point of them is that they travel with the employee, don't just disappear if the employee changes jobs. The other is that I thought that in the early or mid 70s all pension plans had to vest employees at the ten year mark, later changed to five years.

I'm a beneficiary of that vesting. I went to work for an airline (long since absorbed by another, which changed it's name, took over other airlines and recently disappeared as it was incorporated into another airline) in 1969. When I first joined the company, you had to be 25 years old and have been employed for at least a couple of years (I no longer remember the specifics) to enroll in the pension plan. After I'd been there about a year it changed. We were all automatically enrolled, regardless of age. Oh, I might want to point out that I was only 20 when I went to work for them. But more importantly, the pension contribution was 100% from the company. Not a penny from us. This would have been connected to the fact that back then unions were very strong, and even those of us not unionized benefited. Anyway, I was enrolled in the company pension plan by the time I was 21 or so. Then, at some point in the mid or late 70s, federal law changed to require all employees be vested at the ten year point. Or a company could simply disband its pension plan altogether, which is what at least one airline did. Mind didn't.

I worked there for ten and a half years, and was vested in the plan by the time I left. Fortunately, I never expected my pension to be more than maybe one hundred dollars a month. And it's a very good thing my expectations were so low, as after a couple of bankruptcies the company was able to abrogate its pension obligations entirely, turning them over to the PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) and cut everyone's pensions by 2/3. Luckily for me I'd never thought I'd get very much money. But for those who worked there for thirty years or more, who'd counted on a decent pension, well they were screwed.

I keep on muttering that state, city, and municipal pensions could easily disappear the same way.

[llmart]

6. I remember many instances like the one you experienced.

My memory may be wrong, but I believe the laws regarding pensions and how companies could get out of honoring their pension plans changed during the Reagan years. My husband's company filed Chapter 11 and was able to get away with not honoring their pension obligations that way. The employees filed a class action lawsuit and eventually, after maybe ten years, they settled but got only a small fraction of what they should have gotten.

I have a neighbor now who was a pilot for one of the big airlines and he lost his entire pension. I believe it was United. I remember an episode of Phil Donahue where he did an expose on Pan Am and how they had stiffed their employees. He had many ex-Pan Am employees in the audience that day and of course, as Phil usually did, he interviewed a lot of them.

I worked for a municipality for about ten years and have a small pension, but at one point during my time there the board simply voted that anyone hired after a certain year was no longer able to be in the pension plan; that they could take part in a 403B plan if they wanted to. All it took was a vote by the board to change things. So yes, you are correct that eventually there will be no more pensions. I see that as a double edged sword. Yes, there are some advantages to having your money be portable and a person being able to manage it. However, because I was in benefits and HR for years, what I found was that few people had the discipline or understanding to do what was best for them. Sometimes they were just lazy and didn't want to learn anything and sometimes they didn't have the discipline to not touch the money before retirement or, as in 2008, they found themselves strapped for money and they had to use it.

I guess on this issue I can see both sides of the coin because of the type of work I did. You and I may have ended up OK in our retirement but many, many people did not. Lots of people are also risk averse and like the certainty of a fixed amount each month that they can count on.

[Achilleaze]

5. typical republican

[ck4829]

7. K&R