Our government in inaction–hurricane survivors who had jobs with benefits before Katrina, but who lost their jobs and benefits because of Katrina, now find they don’t qualify for assistance with health insurance.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writes in today’s Los Angeles Times,

Like most of those whose lives were upended by Hurricane Katrina, 52-year-old school bus driver Emanuel Wilson can thank the federal government for the fact that he has money to pay rent. He’s also been given food stamps to make sure he can buy groceries. And if he had young children, the government would almost certainly be helping them get back to school.

But what Wilson needs is chemotherapy, and that is something the government seems unable to help him with. Wilson was being treated with monthly chemo injections for his intestinal cancer before the hurricane.

He has been denied assistance largely because, before the storm, he had what the government says it wants every American to have: health insurance….

… Wilson can’t reinstate his health insurance — which expires at the end of this month — because the storm wiped out his job. The government says he doesn’t fall into any of the rigid eligibility categories for federally sponsored Medicaid.

More than half of the Louisiana households displaced by Katrina who applied for Medicaid were denied. There is a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would open Medicaid for Katrina survivors for up to ten months, but the Bush White House opposes it. Why? It would create a “major new entitlement.”

I guess it’s more important to give tax cuts to billionaires than to give chemotherapy to a hurricane survivor.

Newt Gingrich thinks that instead of Medicaid, the Katrina survivors should be given vouchers to buy private health insurance. I suppose that would be all right as long as the insurers will accept new customers with pre-existing conditions, although I suspect the Medicaid route would actually be more cost-effective for the government.

But seems to me something needs to be done right now. I’m sure a lot of these people have medical problems that need treatment sometime this decade.

Speaking of health care–via Kevin Drum, be sure to read this column in the Dallas Morning News (registration firewall alert) about a urologist promoting a national health-care plan.