Apparently, the NRA isn’t the only one to blame for the Ebola crisis. Salon editor and professional troll Joan Walsh wonders if Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry doesn’t share some of the blame, at least when it comes to the death of victim Thomas Eric Duncan.
It’s probably no accident, either, that it happened in Rick Perry’s Texas. More than 1.5 million Texans, with a median income of $833, are going uninsured because Perry rejected Medicaid funding. Medicaid wouldn’t have helped Duncan, but it might help someone exposed to him. Right now Youngor Jallah, the woman who got Duncan to the hospital when his symptoms worsened, says she doesn’t have Medicaid or any health insurance.
It certainly takes chutzpah to suggest that it was “no accident” a tragic death in Perry’s Texas because he rejected Medicaid expansion, only to admit in the very next sentence that Duncan wouldn’t have been helped by Medicaid (which isn’t available to non-citizens).
Walsh also went out of her way to inject a racial element into the story. She quotes Democratic Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price as saying, “The real elephant in the room is, the man was black, he had no insurance, and therefore he was basically turned away.”